


Dawn

by PixChuu22



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Alternate Canon, BAMF Chloe Decker, BAMF Lucifer Morningstar (Lucifer TV), Case Fic, Demons, Eventual Happy Ending, F/M, Insecure Lucifer, Murder, Not Canon Compliant, Post-Season/Series 04, Pregnancy, Protective Lucifer, Protective Lucifer Morningstar (Lucifer TV), Ruler of Hell Lucifer Morningstar (Lucifer TV), Slow Burn, Unplanned Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-19
Updated: 2020-08-09
Packaged: 2021-03-05 06:15:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 59,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25379731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PixChuu22/pseuds/PixChuu22
Summary: Set immediately post-s4e10.When Lucifer told Chloe that the only way to save everyone was for him to return to Hell, Chloe asked for only one thing: a night together.Two months later, Chloe begins to realize the ramifications of that request. As a murderer terrorizes single mothers in LA, Chloe has to come to grips with an unplanned pregnancy while Lucifer struggles to bring the demons in Hell back under his control.
Relationships: Amenadiel & Chloe Decker, Chloe Decker & Dan Espinoza, Chloe Decker & Ella Lopez, Chloe Decker & Linda Martin, Chloe Decker & Lucifer Morningstar, Chloe Decker & Mazikeen, Chloe Decker/Lucifer Morningstar
Comments: 400
Kudos: 845





	1. Chapter 1

Chloe stared in blank disbelief at the two pink lines on the pregnancy test in her hand. She felt frozen in the moment, her breaths hitching in her chest as she tried to shape her brain around what her eyes were telling her. The test began to blur as the combination of her trembling hands and eyes filling with tears worked together to make it unreadable. It didn't matter if she couldn't read it anymore; she still remembered what it had told her. 

Two pink lines meant “yes.” Two pink lines meant “pregnant.”

“But I can't be,” she insisted, her voice shaking as hard as her hands, the words barely louder than a whisper in the silence of the early morning hours that blanketed the bathroom. “I can't be. This... this isn't possible.”

'Totally possible,' the pregnancy test in her hand seemed to insist. 'Look at how pink both of these lines are!'

“Mommy?” Trixie's voice from outside the locked bathroom door was muzzy with sleep, and Chloe shoved the pregnancy test under one arm guiltily before realizing she'd just shoved a pee-wet stick of plastic into her armpit and grimaced. “Mommy? Why is the door locked? I really need to pee.”

“One second, Monkey!” Chloe said, her voice only a little shaky. She stood up from the lid of the toilet, jerking the pregnancy test – still positive – out from under her armpit and shoving it into the trashcan beside the toilet, burying it under an empty plastic deodorant container and a few miscellaneous bits of discarded toilet paper. Chloe scrubbed her hands briskly with soap under the running tap before wetting one corner of a hand towel and scrubbing the still-damp-from-pee-stick spot under her arm. Trixie was twisting the door handle with increasing impatience, her voice becoming whiny as she insisted, “I really, _really_ need to pee!”

Chloe shut off the water in the sink, tossed the towel onto the counter, and unlocked the door. She stumbled to the side as Trixie shoved her way in, already pulling at her pajama shorts to get them off. 

“Sorry, Monkey,” Chloe said absently, stepping out of the bathroom and shutting the door to give Trixie some privacy. She leaned against the wall outside the bathroom door, pressing her still-shaking hands to her mouth. _Pregnant?_ How the hell was she _pregnant?_

A little burble of laughter escaped her, muffled by her shaking fingers, and she pushed away from the wall to walk towards the kitchen. 'Hell' was definitely an appropriate appellative, considering who the father had to be.

And that realization broke her. Tears began to fall, hot against her cheeks as she pressed her hands against her lips hard enough that it hurt. She absolutely knew who the father was. She'd only been intimate with one man – person – being in the last _year_ , and that was Lucifer.

Lucifer Morningstar, fallen archangel and Lord of Hell, returned now to his throne and gone from her world.

And she was pregnant.

The bathroom door opened and Trixie stepped out, smiling now that she'd emptied her bladder and had a few minutes in which to wake up. The smile vanished as soon as she saw her mother's tear-streaked face. “Mommy? What's wrong?”

“Nothing, baby. I’m sorry. I just… I…” Chloe floundered for a second, trying to find an answer that was close to the truth without blurting out the entire truth and overwhelming her daughter. “I just miss Lucifer.”

Sympathy crossed Trixie’s small face, and she wrapped her arms around her mother’s waist, squeezing tight. “I miss him, too,” she confessed. After a second, she tilted her head from where it was pressed to Chloe’s ribs to look up at her mother hopefully. “Maybe some pancakes for breakfast will make us feel better?”

Chloe couldn’t help the smile that pulled up the corners of her mouth. Trixie, as always, was angling for a special treat.

“Maybe they would, Monkey, but we don’t have time. I have to get ready to go and so do you. Daddy will be here soon to take you to school. Now scoot.”

Trixie grimaced faintly but accepted her mother’s ruling, giving one last squeeze before trundling off to get ready for school. Chloe froze her face into a non-expression as she turned and headed up to her bedroom on the tiny second floor of the apartment, refusing to fall apart again.

It had been almost seven weeks since Lucifer had returned to Hell to protect her and everyone he cared about on Earth from the attentions of the demons he had ruled over before he’d taken an unexpected leave of Hell to ‘vacation’ on Earth. The weeks since he’d left had been hard. The first few days had been the worst, dragging past in an emotional blankness and horrible sameness that had left Chloe feeling like she was never entirely sure what day it was. By the time the second week began, Chloe was no longer taking frequent breaks to cry in the women’s restroom at work. Her paperwork no longer came back to her from the acting-Lieutenant, Gene McGregor, for her to correct when she’d forgotten to fill out all the necessary information on the forms or had used nonsense sentences in her summaries. 

Dan had done what he could, temporarily partnering with her. He’d taken the lead on the cases they’d been assigned, but Chloe knew that the precinct wasn’t unaware of the fact that her irascible ‘consultant’ hadn’t been showing up and that Chloe herself had been walking around like a zombie for weeks. It didn’t take a genius to put two and two together and come up with four, and she was sure gossip was flying behind her back. At least they had the decency not to spew it to her face.

It had taken her three weeks for her to finally stop living in a kind of waking Hell where she went from home to work to home. She’d started going out of the apartment again. She’d gone out drinking with Maze, which had been an adventure in avoiding alcohol poisoning. She visited Linda and Amenadiel, bringing a stuffed animal baby Charlie wouldn’t be able to appreciate for months yet. She went out for dinner with Dan and Trixie, putting on a brave face for them. 

The weeks had trickled by, making it more and more obvious that Lucifer was not coming back. 

And now…

Chloe sat on the end of her bed, burying her face in her hands. Her mind was racing, but somehow not going anywhere. It was rolling over and over the same question: How had this happened?

And that was the hilarious thing; she knew _exactly_ how it had happened.

* * * * *

_Seven Weeks Earlier_

The stars above the balcony outside Lucifer’s penthouse loft above his nightclub, Lux, shone almost as brilliantly as the city lights of Los Angeles below. Chloe ignored them both, her eyes fixed with pleading desperation on Lucifer’s face. He stood at the rail of the balcony, looking at her with sorrow and longing as he explained that he had to return to Hell, that the only way to ensure the safety of his nephew, of his friends, of Chloe herself, was to take hold of the reigns of Hell and become, once more, the King to the demons who had very nearly been the undoing of them all just hours before. It all made perfect, logical sense…but that didn’t stop Chloe from begging him to not let it happen.

“Please,” she whispered, her voice so broken and desperate that the word was barely more than a breath of air. “Please, don’t go. I –” She stopped, closing her eyes and pulling her courage around her tightly, knowing that if anything would make a difference in this moment, the truth would. “I love you.”

She watched Lucifer’s face as it softened, sorrow turning to surprised disbelief, tears sparkling unshed in his dark eyes as he stared at her across the small balcony.

“I love you,” she repeated, throwing the words into the night like a rope to draw him back to her. “Please, _don’t leave_.”

The tiny gasp of air Lucifer exhaled turned into a weak, disbelieving laugh as the surprise on his face turned to joy and he moved towards her, the strength of her confession drawing him in.

“You see, we were wrong about something else in the prophecy,” he said, his voice achingly tender as he raised a hand to cup her face, his skin hot against the coolness of tears on Chloe’s face. His thumb tenderly brushed beneath her eye, sweeping away wetness. “My first love was never Eve. It was you, Chloe. It always has been.”

He leaned down, his lips meeting hers with gentleness and trembling intensity. Chloe returned the kiss whole-heartedly, pouring all of the emotion she felt into it and cupping her hand behind his head to try and keep him there with her.

He pulled back and Chloe’s eyes opened slowly, staring into the unfathomable darkness of his, pleading. “Please. Don’t go,” she begged, her fingers tightening on the lapels of his suit jacket. “Just stay a little longer. Lucifer, please, just for tonight.”

He hesitated, his dark eyes searching her face and hope fluttered in her belly, tiny butterfly wings rising in her as she clung tighter still, crumpling the material of his expensive suit in her shaking fists. “Just for tonight. Stay with me.”

She saw the moment he broke. Something in his eyes crumpled, his brows drew together, and a look of sharp pain crossed his beautiful face. And then he was kissing her, no longer gentle and tender but demanding and desperate. It knocked the breath from Chloe’s lungs for a moment, and then she was kissing him back, giving as good as she got. 

They stumbled from the balcony into the penthouse, Chloe’s hip bumping against the side of the buttercup-yellow leather couch as Lucifer maneuvered her through the living room and towards the bedroom, his hands sliding down her back and delving beneath her heavy sweater, his fingers warming her skin as they brushed across her lower back in sensual arcs. She felt a shiver run through her and broke the kiss long enough to make a soft, approving noise in the back of her throat. 

Lucifer responded by smoothing his hands across her butt, cupping beneath it and lifting her onto him. She wrapped her arms automatically around his neck, holding tight as he stepped up the steps into his bedroom. She’d been in the room with him so many times before, but never like this. 

Chloe’s heart was hammering against her ribs as Lucifer crouched beside the bed, lowering her gently onto the mattress. His dark eyes were on hers, and there was a pause as he stared at her.

“Are you sure?” he asked, his voice low and warm, giving her ample opportunity to change her mind before they moved any further forward.

“I’m sure.” Her arms, still wrapped around the back of his neck from the trip up the stairs into the bedroom, tightened and pulled him back in for another kiss. “I’m sure, Lucifer.”

They undressed each other reverently. In some distant part of Chloe’s mind, she was memorizing every moment, aware that this was probably the one and only chance she’d have to experience this with him. But the forefront of her mind was focused fully on giving and receiving pleasure, on the skim of his fingertips across her skin as the clothes fell away, on the taste of the sweat on his skin as she explored the planes of his chest and abdomen with her lips and tongue. 

When they finally came together, and Chloe felt Lucifer slide inside of her, her nails dug into his arms with painful force. It felt like the culmination of years of buildup, everything coming to this one moment. 

Lucifer hissed in a breath of pain as her nails wounded him, but he didn’t complain. He stared down at her as if he were memorizing her in the moment, a bright spark to take with him into the darkness. Chloe slammed her eyes shut as the idea entered her head, letting go of his arms to draw his face to hers, losing herself in the kisses and the feel of him slowly beginning to move inside of her.

They moved together for what felt like ages, giving and receiving comfort and pleasure, changing positions and touching and tasting. When they finally settled beside each other, spent and sweaty and content, Chloe with one leg thrown over Lucifer’s hip and his hands stroking through her sweat-tangled hair, she didn’t try to resist the sleep that tugged at her. She didn’t want to say goodbye, and sleep was the only escape she had from that inevitability.

When she woke up the next morning, she was alone in the bed. Wrapped in the sheet, dragging the material behind her like a wedding train, Chloe prowled silently through the entire penthouse to verify that Lucifer wasn’t there. It wasn’t until she found the single huge, white feather fluttering languidly in the morning breeze on the floor of the balcony that she accepted that she was alone.


	2. Chapter 2

Chloe was still sitting on the edge of the bed, her face in her hands and her elbows braced on her knees, when Dan arrived to pick Trixie up for school. She heard the murmur of voices downstairs, but she was lost in her own thoughts. It wasn’t until Dan clumped his way up the stairs to her bedroom that Chloe realized he was there.

“Chlo?” Dan’s voice was gentle, and he hovered in the doorway to the bedroom like he wasn’t entirely sure if he were welcome. He’d been walking on emotional eggshells for months, having recently suffered his own broken heart when his girlfriend, Charlotte Richards, had been shot and killed. He’d only just started to recover when Lucifer left, and he found himself dealing not only with his own internal carnage but also his ex-wife’s. “Trixie said you were crying…are you okay?”

Chloe tried to pull herself together, sitting up straight on the edge of the bed and trying to paste a smile onto her face. The expression only lasted a second before it crumbled at the edges and she hunched forward again, pressing her face back into her hands.

“I’m not okay,” she mumbled, and Dan stepped slowly into the room, his hands stuffed uncomfortably in his jeans pockets as his boots clumped softly across the wooden floor towards her. “I’m so far away from ‘okay’ that I can’t even imagine what it would look like right now.”

“Hey,” he said, reaching out to rub stiffly at one of her hunched shoulders as Chloe sat in a limp heap on the end of the mattress. “I know. It’s normal to backslide. Some days, I feel like I can handle being without Charlotte better, and then other days, I just can’t get -”

“I’m pregnant,” Chloe blurted, lifting her head to look up at Dan’s face.

“I can’t get… get…” Dan let the words trail away. He swallowed thickly, his face gone blank. “I uh… I… did you just… just say -”

“Pregnant,” Chloe repeated.

“I thought that’s what you said.” Dan’s voice sounded suddenly dry and weak. He sank down next to her on the end of the bed and they sat in silence for a few long seconds, both staring down in the general direction of the floor. “Is it… uh, is it…”

“Lucifer’s,” Chloe confirmed.

Dan let out a bark of disbelieving laughter before putting his face in his hands and rubbing his palms briskly over the skin of his face. He looked over at her, his expression incredulous. “Chloe. _Lucifer’s?”_

Dan shoved to his feet, leaving the mattress bouncing under Chloe for a second as he stalked towards the bedroom door. He spun just before he reached the doorway and stomped back to her, his face pulled tight and furious as he whispered, “Did he know? Is this why he left? Because, I swear to God, I will hunt him down and –”

“No!” Chloe interrupted quickly, rising to her feet and tugging weakly at the hem of the T-shirt she’d slept in the night before, rubbing her palms against the thighs of her pajama pants, fidgeting with nervous energy. “No, he didn’t know. He _doesn’t_ know. I haven’t told anyone…I mean, except you. I just found out this morning. I guess I’d… I’d sort of wondered the last few days. I kind of lost track of…of…of everything when he left. But I realized a couple days ago that I might be late and…” Chloe raised her hands in a halfhearted shrug. Dan stared at her, his face a mixture of disbelief and anger.

“What are you going to do?”

Chloe sank back onto the bed, the strength going out of her legs. There it was: the $10,000 Question. What the hell was she going to do?

“I… I don’t know.”

“Are you going to keep it? Because I really don’t think it’s a good idea, Chloe. You have work, and Trixie, and it’s not like he’s the kind of guy who’d support his babymama, even if he _were_ around to take responsibility for the mess he’s caused.”

Chloe’s lips pinched in and her lower jaw jutted forward as she stood up once more, moving towards Dan in short, choppy steps. “Stop. Stop _right_ now. You _don’t_ get to have an opinion about this, Dan. You’ve made your feelings on Lucifer perfectly clear over the last few years. I probably shouldn’t even have told you about this, but I was too shocked to think clearly.” 

Dan’s frown darkened, his lips curling back slightly to expose his clenched teeth, but he didn’t say anything else.

“Whatever I do next will be _my_ choice. All I need to know is that you can support me, no matter what I decide. Can you do that, Dan?”

He glared at her, breathing hard as he worked to get his temper under control. He’d never been a fan of Lucifer’s, and this wasn’t the easiest way to find out that someone he’d actively disliked for years had slept with his ex-wife. But he was trying. She could see it in the way he flexed his fingers, the slight shake of his head as he dropped his eyes from hers, the slow slump of his shoulders. Finally, Dan sighed heavily, reaching up to rub his hands across his face once again before meeting her eyes.

“Yeah, Chloe. Of course. I’m sorry I… I’m sorry. Look, I better get going if I’m going to get Trix to school on time.”

“Yeah, right. Yeah. I need to hurry if I’m going to get to work on time.”

“You’re going to work today?” Dan asked, sounding taken aback.

“Of course, I am. Where else would I go?”

“I don’t know,” Dan said, shaking his head slowly. “I mean, is there some way you can contact Lucifer? Whatever decision you make, shouldn’t he get a say -”

“Stop,” Chloe said, holding one hand palm-up towards Dan. “Don’t say anything else. Nobody decides what happens to my body but me, Dan. Not you. Not Lucifer. And it wouldn’t matter, even if I felt differently. I _can’t_ contact him.”

“You have no idea where he is?” Dan asked, for what felt like the hundredth time since Lucifer had left.

Chloe hated to lie and lie and lie again each time he asked, so she simply pressed her lips and shook her head mutely. Dan nodded, and sighed before heading back downstairs, calling for Trixie. The truth was, Chloe knew exactly where Lucifer was, and that was the problem: he was in Hell, and completely out of reach for her. He’d sent all the demons back, and followed them to keep them in check.

Chloe felt a tiny surge of excitement, a burst of adrenaline lifting her to her feet. He hadn’t sent all the demons back. And if anyone knew how to get a message to the King of Hell, it would be a demon.

* * * * *

Chloe tapped the nails of her left hand repetitively on top of her desk next to a stack of paperwork waiting for her to correct the mistakes she’d peppered throughout the documents, the phone she held in her right hand continuing to trill the signal that told her it was trying to connect her to Maze’s cell phone. And, like the last five times she’d called, the phone clicked over to voicemail.

She didn’t bother to leave a message this time. She’d already left three variations of “Hey, it’s Chloe. I really need to talk to you. It’s really important. Please call me back” and she didn’t think a fourth repetition would be any more likely to make Maze call her back. 

With a sigh, she put her cellphone face down on the desk and reached for the first file in the stack beside her.

Paperwork was not her favorite activity, and correcting paperwork that she’d previously turned in to the acting-Lieutenant was doubly frustrating, but at least the repetitive sameness of it was soothing. Her brain kind of went into screensaver mode as she retyped reports and printed them out again, shoving the reworked sheets into the file folders. 

She’d nearly completed the necessary corrections on the stack of paperwork when Dan walked towards her desk, a file folder in hand. “Hey, Chloe. We have a body,” he said, giving the folder a little jiggle. Chloe leaned back in her chair, blinking a few times as she tried to pull herself back together from paperwork mode.

“Right. Okay, yeah, let’s go.” She saved the file she’d been correcting and shut down the screen on her computer, grabbing her purse and cell from her desk before trailing after Dan out of the precinct.

Dan didn’t try to make any of his usual small talk as they drove to the scene. At first, Chloe found it soothing to just sit in silence in Dan’s car, staring out the window at the passing traffic. After the first ten minutes, though, it stopped being soothing and Chloe began to feel it pressing on her. She glanced over at Dan and caught him glancing at her at the same moment. He quickly slammed his gaze forward, trying to pretend he hadn’t even taken his eyes off the traffic in front of them, and Chloe sighed.

“Just ask your questions,” she said. “I know you have a few hundred.”

“Okay,” Dan agreed quickly. “You know if you decide to go through with this, you’ll be stuck on desk duty for the next year again, right? You hated desk duty when you were pregnant with Trixie. And what about Trixie? How’s she going to feel about a new baby? And how are you going to handle juggling work and a baby again? You know how hard it was when Trixie was little, even with your Mom helping out when she could and the babysitters – not that it was easy to always get a babysitter. Our hours were unpredictable, and there was no way to be sure someone would always be there. I mean we made it work, but this time, you’d be a single mom. Of course, I’d help out as much as I could, but Chlo, this just isn’t a good idea.”

There was a long silence as Chloe stared at Dan, her eyebrows raised almost to her hairline. He glanced at her a couple of times, trying to keep his eyes on the road while also gauging her reaction to his litany of questions.

“Okay. So. That’s a lot of good questions,” she said. “And I don’t have a lot of good answers. Look, I haven’t even made up my mind yet.” And she hadn’t. So why did saying that make her chest hurt? 

“Right. Yeah, I know. I just…I feel like maybe you aren’t thinking ahead. Like maybe you’re just…just hanging on to any last piece of Lucifer that you can.”

Chloe bit back the retort that immediately popped to mind and took a deep breath, calming herself. “Maybe that’s true. But, Dan, if you had one last piece of Charlotte left, wouldn’t you hold on to it, too?”

The car slowed as traffic ahead of them braked, and Dan stared silently out the front windshield for a long moment before he turned at looked at Chloe, the shine of unshed tears in his eyes. “Yeah,” he admitted, his voice rough. “I get it, Chloe. I just think you need to think this through before you make any permanent decisions.”

“I am,” she assured him. “That’s what I’m doing. I just need some time to…to figure it all out.”

Dan nodded, and they drove the rest of the way in strained silence.

* * * * *

The suburban neighborhood that Dan pulled into was solidly middle-class, the houses small but neatly maintained. All the small front yards were either cultivated and mown grass or beautiful desert landscapes of rock and cactus. The front garden beds sported shrubs, flowers, and more cacti. The neighborhood did not look like the type in which violent crimes would be committed.

The victim’s house was one of the rocks-and-cacti yards, and the house itself had fairly new siding and even the windows looked recently cleaned. Chloe wondered when was the last time she’d taken a rag to the windows in her apartment, and cringed inwardly as she followed Dan into the house.

Ella Lopez, forensic scientist and effervescent bubble of joy, was on the scene when Dan and Chloe arrived. She glanced up from the victim, her dark ponytail swinging over one shoulder, and hefted the camera she had previously been taking photos with as she stood and moved towards them, using her free hand to steady the messenger bag of equipment hanging over her shoulder.

“Hey.” She gave Chloe a sympathetic smile, and Chloe saw the other woman resisting the urge to ask if she’d heard anything from Lucifer. Ella had asked every few days for the first couple of weeks, but when she noticed how much it upset Chloe, she’d stopped. It was obvious that Ella, like everyone else, wanted answers about Lucifer’s sudden disappearance – answers Chloe couldn’t give. After all, she couldn’t just blurt out, “Oh, yeah, he’s _actually_ Lucifer, and he had to go back to Hell to rule over the demons because they were getting rowdy and coming up to Earth to wreak havoc and kill people. Like, a lot of people. A _lot_ of people.” 

No, that definitely wasn’t an explanation she could share.

“Hi, Ella. So…uh, what have we got?” Chloe gestured toward the woman’s body on the blue rug in the center of the living room. A toppled coffee table off to one side of the rug had seemingly been replaced by the woman that now took the spot at the center of the room, surrounded by pale blue fluff.

“Oh, yeah. Of course.” Ella slung the strap of the camera around her neck and gestured with one hand, keeping the other on the camera to prevent it swinging. “Andrea Miller, 37. From the marks on her neck, it looks like she was strangled. Based on lividity, I’m placing time of death yesterday evening between 8pm and midnight. She was discovered this morning when her babysitter showed up and found that Andrea Miller had been killed.”

“Not without a fight,” Dan noted, glancing around the room. The toppled coffee table was not the only thing out of place, Chloe thought, unless the former Ms. Miller had been an even worse homemaker than Chloe. The couch was pushed out at an angle on one end, and a half-folded throw blanket was crumpled on the floor beside it. A lamp had toppled sideways onto an end table, and several books had fallen in front of a tall bookcase just beyond the blue area rug upon which Andrea Miller had finished her life.

“Yeah, she definitely fought back. As near as I can tell, she struggled for a few minutes, running into the couch here, which bumped that table and knocked over the lamp. She must’ve stumbled into the bookshelf over there, knocking those books down. I’ve found a few corresponding bruises on her back and hips to back that up. I also found what looks like blood under a few of her nails; I’ll run it to see if I can get a match,” Ella said, raising her brows at Chloe with a faint smile.

“Good,” Chloe said encouragingly, earning a bigger smile from Ella. The other woman had been trying for weeks to lighten Chloe’s mood, and while Chloe had struggled to play along and give anything back but morose silence, any time she responded to Ella’s overtures of cheer, Ella lit up like a Christmas tree.

“Great! So, I’m almost finished here and I’ll get back to the lab and start running the tests. Oh! But there’s one more big thing: Andrea Miller isn’t the only one who lived here.”

“So, maybe there’s a witness?” Dan said hopefully, propping his hands on his hips as she glanced around the living room.

“I mean, yeah, but I don’t think they’ll be a lot of help,” Ella said, grimacing. “Alex Miller is Andrea’s son. He's missing. And he’s only two months old.”


	3. Chapter 3

Chloe climbed into the passenger seat of Dan’s car, her lips pressed together into a thin line. She could feel Dan holding back comments; she’d been seeing the looks he’d been shooting at her for the last hour while they’d been talking to the neighbors and trying to gather any information that could help lead them to Andrea Miller’s murderer and Alex Miller’s kidnapper, but no one had seen or heard anything the night before. Unless the blood under Andrea Miller’s nails came up with a match, the case could be a complete dead end.

“Chloe,” Dan began, as soon as he’d started the car, but Chloe cut him off.

“Don’t say anything.”

“No, Chloe, look, I don’t think this is a good case -”

“Dan, don’t.”

“- for you to be working right now -”

“Dan!”

“ – when you’re pregnant!” Dan finished determinedly, raising his voice to be heard over Chloe’s protestations. 

“This is the _perfect_ case for me to be working right now, Dan. There’s absolutely no reason I shouldn’t try and solve Andrea Miller’s murder and try to find her baby. I realize you’re just trying to…to look out for me, but Dan…I don’t need your protection.” Chloe looked up, meeting Dan’s worried eyes, and sighed softly. “I’m going to be fine, Dan. I can handle this case. I can handle my situation. Okay?”

“Right. Okay. I’ll stop… mother henning you, okay?”

“Please. Thank you.” Chloe forced a laugh, not really feeling any desire at all to laugh but needing to reassure Dan to keep him from continuing to push the issue. He hesitated a moment, but finally smiled back at her, giving his head a little shake before putting the car into gear. 

“I’m ready for some lunch. Want to swing through somewhere and grab something?”

Chloe hadn’t really eaten that morning, but her emotions were swirling around in her stomach and keeping her from really feeling hungry. She gave a noncommittal lift of one shoulder. “Sure, go wherever you like. I’ll pick something when we get there.” 

The trill of her cellphone interrupted whatever Dan had been about to say and she leaned down, lifting the phone from where she’d stashed it inside her purse. When she saw Maze’s name on the screen, she sucked in a sharp breath and scrambled to accept the call before it was pushed to voicemail.

“Maze?” she answered breathlessly, her heart suddenly in her throat.

“Hey, Decker. What’s the big emergency?” Maze sounded disinterested, and in the background, Chloe could hear the sounds she associated most strongly with a dive bar: distant music, the clink of glasses, the rumble of male voices punctuated with the occasional bark of female laughter.

“I uh…how…how are you?” Chloe suddenly felt hesitant to blurt out the entire issue to Maze, especially with Dan sitting a few inches away in the driver’s seat. 

“ _That’s_ your ‘really important’ thing you needed to talk about? Decker, are you kidding me? If you don’t have anything you need right now, I have to let you go; I’m trying to track a guy and this call is gonna distract me from -”

“I need to talk to Lucifer,” Chloe blurted, and she heard Dan’s sharp inhale from the other side of the front seat.

There was a long pause as Maze digested Chloe’s request, the song in the background of the call coming to an end and another song beginning with a squeal of guitar strings.

“No can do,” Maze finally said.

“Maze – ” Chloe began, but the demon cut her off sharply.

“Decker. He’s gone, okay? You told me yourself, he went back to Hell. I don’t have a way to get there. He was my way out, and my way back in, and with him gone and me… _here,”_ Maze said, putting heavy emphasis on the word ‘here’ which made it abundantly clear to Chloe that she meant ‘Earth’ and not ‘this bar’ or ‘this city.’ “I have absolutely _no_ way to get back in touch with him.”

“What about…what about what he did before? When he…he died, to get that cure for me when I was poisoned?” Chloe asked, referring back to a case several years before where the only way to save her life was for someone to go down to Hell and retrieve a secret formula from a literal mad scientist.

“Okay, Decker, the only reason that worked is because he’s an archangel, okay? He is a being of spirit, kind of like a human soul. But unlike humans, who have a one-way ticket up or down, archangels can travel between the realms at will. If you kill _me,_ I just end. I don’t have a soul; no demons do. I can’t go back to Hell unless Lucifer comes back to fly me down, okay?”

“Right,” Chloe said, deflating slightly. “Of course. I…I knew that. I just…forgot.”

There was a pause, and then a heavy sigh. Chloe could almost hear the annoyance in Maze’s sigh, and knew what was coming before Maze spoke. “Spill it, Decker. What’s wrong? Why are you calling me to try and get ahold of Lucifer? This isn’t just you missing him, is it?”

“No,” Chloe said, her voice small.

“Then what’s going on?” Maze demanded.

“It’s…I’m…before he left, Lucifer and I…” Chloe stopped, taking a breath. “I’m pregnant. It’s Lucifer’s.”

_“What?!”_ Maze’s shriek was loud enough that Dan heard it, and he jumped a bit in the driver’s seat, casting a sharp look over at Chloe where she hunched uncomfortably in her seat, one hand holding her cell phone to her ear and the other pressed over her eyes in mortification.

“Please, don’t scream like that again,” Chloe asked, keeping her voice low and calm.

“You can’t be _pregnant!”_ Maze protested. “He’s an archangel! I mean, I know Amenadiel and Linda have Charlie, but Amenadiel wasn’t exactly celestial at the time of conception. Was Lucifer…I mean, he was still a…of course, he was, it would’ve been right before he went back to Hell. So how are you…this isn’t possible. Decker, are you _sure?”_

“I took a test this morning. I’m planning to call my ob/gyn in a little while to set up an appointment and be really, _really_ sure. But, yeah, I’m pretty sure.”

This time the pause went on even longer than the first had. When Maze finally spoke, she sounded defeated. “Shit. Okay. I’m coming back.”

“But the guy you’re tracking -”

“Will still be worth as much in a couple of weeks as he is right now. I need to come back, okay? I need to…to… _do_ something. Have you told anyone else?”

“Only Dan and you so far.”

“Dan?” Maze said, giving a little snorting laugh. “Why did you tell _Dan?”_

“He’s my ex-husband, Maze. He’s still a big part of Trixie’s and my lives, and he’s going to be a part of this baby’s life, one way or another. He needed to know. And, I mean, I’m kind of all alone with this right now. I needed some support.”

Chloe caught Dan’s guilty grimace out of the corner of her eye, but didn’t turn her head to look at him. Let him have his moment of self-recrimination in peace.

“Support. I can do that,” Maze said. “I’ll be there by bedtime.”

“Maze, wait, I -” Chloe began, but the phone call was over. She glanced at the screen of her cell phone to verify that Maze had ended the call and then groaned, pressing the phone to her face and closing her eyes tight.

“Sooo,” Dan prompted, pulling into the drive thru lane of a national burger chain.

“Maze can’t contact him, either. And she’s coming back home tonight.”

“Oh.” Dan rubbed his palms up and down the steering wheel for a second, and then blurted, “I’m really sorry about what a jerk I’ve been to you since you told me this morning. I just want what’s best for you, and I…I guess I started thinking that I knew better than you what’s best for you, you know? I’m going to try to cut that out. You need support. I can do that.”

Chloe lowered her phone to her lap, sitting up straight and looking over to meet Dan’s hopeful expression.

“Really? No more second-guessing me and telling me how much better off I’ll be if I don’t have a baby around to weigh me down?”

Dan pressed his lips together for a moment, grimacing as he struggled with himself. Finally, he blew a sharp breath out of his nose and nodded. “Yep. I’m done. Supportive Dan from here on out, okay? Whatever you need.”

“Good,” Chloe said, pressing her hands hard against the tops of her thighs. “Because I think I’m going to have it.”

“You…you…hey!” Dan said, the word stuffed full to bursting with false cheer. “You’re gonna…have it. That’s…hey!” 

Chloe snorted out a laugh, shaking her head. “Dan, stop. I can tell you aren’t actually happy about this.”

“I mean, Chloe…it’s…it’s a _baby_. That’s a big deal. It’s not like you’re adopting a hamster or something. But…but, you’re right. This _is_ your choice. But have you actually thought it through?”

“What’s to think through, Dan? You’re right: this isn’t like getting a pet or buying a new car. This is a person that I made. Sure, I wasn’t planning to, and I know that I probably wouldn’t have chosen to do this if anyone had asked me. But, Dan, _no one_ asked me. This just…just happened to me. And I have to believe that it happened for a _reason_.” Chloe realized she was talking about more than the pregnancy now, and these weren’t things Dan was familiar with. She, herself, was a baby that only existed because of Divine interference. What, exactly, would you call the Devil – a literal archangel – impregnating a human? They were two different species, for God’s sake. 

Chloe grimaced at the thought. ‘God’s sake,’ indeed. She would bet a month’s salary that His Holiness had a hand in this. And if God really did intend her to get pregnant, then an abortion would probably earn her a one-way ticket to eternal torture somewhere _worse_ than Hell, if such a place existed.

Dan gave a joyless laugh from the driver’s seat, edging the car forward a few inches as the car in front of them in the drive thru pulled up to place their order. “You sound like Ella now. ‘Everything happens for a reason.’ ‘God has a hand in everything.’”

Chloe smiled weakly. She did sound like Ella. And here she’d always thought the other woman sounded naïve and foolish when she spoke about ‘God’s will.’ Now, Chloe was painfully, sharply aware of just how real God’s will was.

“Yeah, well…” Chloe shrugged. “The point is, I’m doing this.”

Dan stared at her for a second, then shook his head. “All right. All aboard the pregnancy train, then. Supportive Dan, here to help. What do you need from me?”

Chloe smiled faintly, reaching out to pat Dan’s nearest hand where it rested on the steering wheel. The car inched forward, and Dan rolled down his window. The smell of fast food grease filled the car, and Chloe’s stomach did a slow, dangerous roll. 

_‘Oh, no,’_ she thought, suddenly flashing back to the early months of her pregnancy with Trixie. 

Dan was leaning out the window, speaking to the employee through the speaker on the menu. He turned to look over his shoulder at Chloe, asking, “What do you want?”

“Unlock the door,” she gasped, feeling her gorge rising.

“What?”

“The door the door the door!” she chanted with rising franticness, and Dan fumbled with the door locks, alarm rising on his face as Chloe clawed at the door handle, flinging it open just in time to vomit the contents of her almost-empty stomach on the dirty cement of the drive through lane.

* * * * *

Chloe slumped miserably on the couch in her apartment, sipping slowly on a steaming mug of chamomile tea with a tiny squeeze of honey in it. It was the only thing in the house that didn’t make her stomach do loop-the-loops at the moment. She’d managed to crawl through most of the rest of her shift before begging for the rest of the day off. The acting-Lieutenant, McGregor, had seemed disinclined to grant her the time off until he’d watched her commandeer his wastepaper basket for another round of dry heaves.

Chloe had experienced the same thing with Trixie’s pregnancy. Some women had morning sickness; Chloe had all-day-nausea. If she could manage to keep her stomach from getting completely empty, she could usually keep from throwing up. But it had been a particularly difficult day and she had yet to manage to keep anything but chamomile tea down.

Chloe felt weak and shaky, and had been relieved beyond measure when Dan volunteered to take Trixie for the week. She had wanted to protest, but it was the most logical thing to do. Dan had said he’d be supportive, and taking over Trixie duty was something he could do to immediately take some of the pressure off of Chloe.

The front door banged open and Maze stormed into the apartment, her arms full of multiple packages of diapers and several full plastic white-and-red Target bags.

“What…what is all of that?” Chloe asked, nonplussed. Maze dropped everything on the floor just inside the door, her dark red lipsticked mouth stretching into a smile as she gestured to the mess cascading across the floor.

“Baby things!” 

“But…but…” Chloe stuttered, putting her mug onto the coffee table and rising to walk to Maze. “I’m only like seven weeks pregnant, Maze. I won’t need any of this for months and months.”

“Yeah, but it’s better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it. Linda told me that,” Maze replied, sounding very sure of herself.

Chloe opened her mouth to argue, and then shut it, shaking her head. “Well…thank you. I’m sure it will all be very useful in eight months.”

“Exactly.” Maze shut the door and looked around the apartment expectantly. “Where’s Trixie?”

“With Dan,” Chloe said. “My morning sickness kicked in right on time, and he thought it might be helpful if he took over primary parenting duties for a week or so while I try to get used to pregnancy again.”

“Morning sickness?” Maze repeated. “But it’s 7:30 at night.”

“Mine was never good at telling time,” Chloe said, returning to the couch to sip her tea again. “I tend to have nausea that lasts all day instead of sticking to the morning hours.”

“Well, that sounds like torture. In fact, I’m pretty sure I’ve used that on someone before.” Maze got a contemplative expression on her face as she sauntered towards Chloe. She perched on an armchair, eyeing the other woman expectantly. This went on for a few uncomfortable minutes before Chloe finally spoke.

“Maze. What are you doing?”

“I’m here to support you! What can I do?”

“Uh.” Chloe lowered her mug of tea back to the coffee table, blinking as she tried to think of some task to give the demon. “Uh.”

“Are you kidding me?” Maze said, jumping up from the armchair. “I drove all the way back here to support you. I got you baby things. That can’t be all you need. C’mon, Decker, what do you need?”

The answer popped from Chloe’s mouth before she had a chance to consider it. “Lucifer.”

The word fell into the room like a pebble dropped into a still pond, rippling outward until the sound of his name seemed to fill the entire room. Chloe could feel tears pricking her eyes, and she looked away from Maze, trying to hide them. She heard the demon sigh heavily then the couch sank beside Chloe as Maze sat down beside her, clenching and unclenching her fists on her lap.

“I was thinking of that on the drive down,” Maze confessed. Chloe reached to wipe away the tears that pooled in her eyes, waiting to fall, and looked up to meet Maze’s frank gaze. “I think I might have an idea.”

“Oh?” Chloe asked, a tiny bubble of hope rising in her.

“Amenadiel. He might be able to make a trip down to Hell. If anyone can, he can.”

“Right…right, of course!” Chloe stood up, crossing the living room into the dining room and grabbing her phone from where she’d dropped it on the dining room table earlier that day. She scrolled through her contacts until she found Linda’s entry and tapped the name, bringing the phone to her ear and her free hand to her mouth, worrying a cuticle with her teeth while she waited for the call to connect. Maze had followed Chloe and stood next to the table, tapping one foot impatiently on the floor as she stared at Chloe.

The call connected and there was a moment of silence before a deep voice spoke very softly. “Linda’s phone, this is Amenadiel speaking.”

“Amenadiel!” Chloe’s heart jumped into her throat. She’d been preparing to speak to Linda, ask if Amenadiel was around and available to talk. To suddenly have him on the phone speaking to her threw her completely off her game.

“Chloe?” Amenadiel sounded puzzled…and, also, incredibly quiet. Why on Earth was he whispering? “Is there something you needed from Linda? She and Charlie are sleeping…”

Well, that explained all the whispering. Chloe cleared her throat, pacing a tight circle between the dining room table and the kitchen counter two feet away. “No. No, actually, I needed to talk to you.”

“Me?”

“About…about Lucifer. I need to get a message to him.”

Amenadiel’s sigh carried through the phone clearly, and Chloe closed her eyes, wincing. Amenadiel and Lucifer had always had a difficult sibling relationship. She knew it had gotten less contentious in the last few months of Lucifer’s time on Earth, but there were literally millennia of hard feelings between the two of them, and a few months of cooperation weren’t likely to erase them.

“Chloe,” Amenadiel said, his voice soft and sympathetic, “I know you want to see him again. I completely understand. But he’s where he’s _supposed_ to be, where our Father _intended_ him to be. I sympathize with how hard this must be for you, but the best thing for everyone is for Lucifer to stay in Hell and for you to move on with your life without him.”

“Amendiel, it’s not what you think -”

“Chloe, I understand that you’re hurting. I know it’s only been a couple of months -”

“About seven weeks,” Chloe interjected, a mirthless smile stretching her lips.

“ – since Lucifer went back. It will get easier with time, Chloe. The most important thing to do is to focus on your life. You have so much more to you than just Lucifer, and I know that you’ll eventually move past what was never meant to be a long-term -”

“I’m pregnant,” Chloe blurted, stopping Amenadiel before he could say anything too horrible. Chloe found the words were getting easier to say with each person she brought into the loop. She felt like she was ready for any reaction that could come her way, what with Dan’s stuttering acceptance and Maze’s shrieking disbelief.

Still, she found herself surprised when the call disconnected.

“Did…did he hang up on me?” Chloe said, taking the phone away from her ear and staring at the screen. “Did he _hang up on me?”_

“Wait, Amenadiel hung up on you?” Maze asked, her eyes narrowing as her shoulders rose in offended fury.

“He hung up on me!” Chloe confirmed, still staring at the screen of her phone.

“I’ll kill him,” Maze snarled, turning to move towards the front door. There was a rushing sound, like the flapping of a heavy blanket in a strong wind, and Chloe’s hair blew back from her face as Amenadiel appeared in her living room, the tall archangel’s wings slowly closing as he pulled them close to his body and tucked them into immateriality. His eyebrows were drawn down heavily over his eyes, and he stared across the room at Chloe with a look somewhere between horror and disbelief.

“Tell me that again, clearly,” he commanded, standing still as a statue next to her coffee table.

“I’m pregnant,” Chloe said, lowering her cell phone to the dining table and walking past Maze towards Amenadiel. “And, yes, I’m sure. And, yes, it’s Lucifer’s.”

“Oh, Father,” Amenadiel prayed, bringing both of his hands up to cover his face, his head bowing forward. “Oh, Lucifer, what have you done _now?”_

“Hey, look, this wasn’t something he did on his own,” Chloe protested, crossing her arms over her chest. “I would like to point out that I was a willing participant in this.”

“Wait, you _wanted_ to get pregnant?” Maze asked, stepping close to Chloe’s back. Chloe turned around to face the demon, already shaking her head.

“No, that wasn’t – we weren’t – it wasn’t supposed to…” Chloe stopped and took a breath, trying to gather her thoughts. “We definitely weren’t trying to make a baby. I didn’t even think it _could_ happen -”

“It _can’t_ ,” Amendiel said.

“Well, it _did_ ,” Chloe protested, turning her head to look back over her shoulder at Amenadiel. “And you’re right, it can’t happen because he’s an archangel and I’m on the pill!”

“Whoa,” Maze said, and Chloe turned her head to look back at the demon again. 

“I know. Okay, look, can you two please…consolidate or something. I’m getting a little dizzy looking back and forth and I’ve already thrown up enough today.”

Amenadiel grimaced, stepping forward and reaching out to take Chloe’s arm solicitously, leading her gently towards the couch and urging her down until she sat. “Of course. I’ve read about this in the books that I studied when Linda was carrying Charlie. ‘Morning sickness,' they said.”

“Except mine is more all-day-nausea,” Chloe corrected.

“Which means ‘morning sickness’ is a stupid name,” Maze grumbled, stomping past Amenadiel to collapse once more in the recliner she’d occupied earlier.

“We’re kind of getting off-topic here,” Chloe said as Amenadiel sat on the couch cushion beside her, near the armchair Maze was sitting in. “The point is, whether it can happen or not, I’m pregnant. I have the test in the bathroom trashcan to prove it, and I have an appointment with my ob/gyn tomorrow morning to verify it. Since this - ” and she broke off for a moment to gesture at her flat abdomen to indicate what ‘this’ she meant, “isn’t physically possible and yet is definitely happening, I have to assume that your Father has something to do with it.”

“Oh. _Oh._ ” Amenadiel’s eyes widened, and he nodded slowly. “He…He more than likely does. I don’t suppose you noticed an angelic presence in the room when you were…were, uh…”

“Fucking?” Maze suggested, and Amenadiel shot her a dark look.

“Copulating,” he corrected, his voice as dry as desert dust. “Perhaps Father tasked one of my brothers or sisters to do for you what I did for your parents.”

“No, I didn’t notice any angels. Except Lucifer, of course.” Chloe paused, something horrifying occurring to her. “Wait. Are you saying you were...were in the bedroom when…when my parents –”

“No!” Amendiel put in quickly, grimacing. Maze snorted out a laugh. “No, I blessed your mother before the – the – ”

“Fucking,” Maze said, smiling maniacally.

“ _Copulation_ ,” Amenadiel insisted, refusing to even look over at the demon, “ever took place. I just thought perhaps you had seen some presence…perhaps even just moments before…?”

“Nothing,” Chloe said, reaching out to lift her mug of chamomile tea from the coffee table. The tea was cold now, but still the most appetizing thing she’d encountered that day, so she took a swallow. “If…if your Father was involved, it was done so far behind the scenes that I never saw anything.”

“And I doubt Lucifer would have gone back to Hell if he’d seen one of our siblings lurking around,” Amendial said in a musing tone, rubbing one side of his jaw as he stared down at the floor. 

“But all of this is beside the point,” Chloe said, reaching over to touch Amenadial’s shoulder lightly. “I need to ask you for a favor.”

“Of course,” he said, his eyes widening slightly. 

“I want you to go to Hell.”

There was a pause, and Amenadiel raised his eyebrows slightly. “You mean this literally?”

“Sorry! Yes, I need you to let Lucifer know about this.” Chloe gestured again at her abdomen, and Amenadiel nodded. He hesitated, his brows drawing down again.

“Chloe, what are you expecting to happen?”

“What do you mean?” Chloe asked cautiously, feeling a knot forming in her stomach as discomfort coursed through her at Amenadiel's careful tone.

“I go down to Hell, I tell Lucifer what has happened, and then…what? Do you think he’ll leave Hell to be with you again?”

Ah. Chloe bit her lips, chewing at them nervously as the ball of tension in her stomach tightened further.

“I…I don’t know. I don’t know. I know he can’t come back. Not so soon, not after what happened.”

“No, Chloe, not _ever_ ,” Amenadiel corrected gently. “He can’t come back to Earth. He has to be in Hell, ruling the demons. They have proven that they will no longer stay contained unless he is there to guard the Gates. I can’t imagine that he’ll be able to step away from them for any length of time for thousands of years. They’ll be waiting for him to turn his back, Chloe.”

The knot in her stomach twisted tight, and Chloe lunged from the chair, rushing into the kitchen just in time to vomit the chamomile tea she'd managed to consume into the kitchen sink.

She’d known that. She’d _known_ that. But hearing it from Amenadiel, stated so baldly, had been more than she could take at the moment. She could hear Amenadiel and Maze speaking in low voices behind her as she dry heaved over the sink, but what they were saying didn’t matter. 

When her stomach finally settled, Chloe ran the water to rinse out the sink and her mouth, swishing thoroughly before spitting into the drain and turning off the tap. She wiped her face on a paper towel, threw it away, and then finally turned to face the angel and demon waiting in her living room. Except the angel was gone.

“Where…?” Chloe began, but Maze stood up from the recliner, crossing her arms as she stared across the apartment at Chloe.

“To Hell. To Lucifer. Amenadiel has gone to tell Lucifer.”


	4. Chapter 4

Maze’s words barely had time to sink in before the heavy-blanket-in-the-wind sound of an archangel’s wings heralded the rush of air that buffeted Chloe for a second. She pushed her loose hair away from her face in a quick, vaguely annoyed movement. 

“Wow, that didn’t take long,” Maze said, grinning. She made her way around the couch to Amenadiel, her expression eager. “What did he say? Is he coming back?”

“I couldn’t get in,” Amenadiel said, giving his shoulders a small backwards shrug as his wings vanished. “The Gates are shut.”

“What?” Chloe said, moving towards the living room with slow steps, reaching out one shaking hand to rest it on the edge of the kitchen counter as she moved past it, trying to find something to steady her. She felt light-headed, and knew she absolutely had to force some kind of food down before she went to bed that night.

“What do you mean, the Gates are shut? Those are only to keep the demons and the damned in. Even if they’re shut, you should’ve been able to get through,” Maze said, frowning heavily.

“Well, they work on archangels now,” Amenadiel said gruffly, one corner of his mouth dipping unhappily. “I felt like a dragonfly on a car windshield when I hit them.”

“But the Gates to Hell _can’t_ be shut to archangels! I mean, it’s not like any of you would ever want to take a day trip there, but they’ve always been open to the celestials,” Maze protested.

“Not anymore,” Amenadiel said. “I can only guess Lucifer has strengthened them recently in his efforts to keep the denizens of Hell contained.”

“So, you’re saying that there’s no way to let Lucifer know?” Chloe asked. The light-headed feeling that was plaguing her only increased as the realization of what Amenadiel was saying swept over her. She’d thought that _someone_ would be able to give Lucifer a head’s-up about what was happening on Earth, and the realization that there was no one who could was hitting her hard. She felt like she couldn’t breathe.

“Yes,” Amenadiel confirmed, his face sorrowful as he stared at her. “Unless Lucifer changes the wardings on the Gates, there’s no way anyone is going in or out.”

“Oh,” Chloe said. And that’s when everything faded out.

* * * * *

It was a perfectly horrible day in Hell, as much as Hell had ‘days.’ In truth, the worst part of Hell was the damnable _sameness_ of it. Every moment was the same as the moment that had come before and the moment that would come afterwards. Ash fell from the cloud-strewn sky in a never-ending patter that never seemed to mound up on the ground. The dim twilight neither brightened nor darkened. The ever-present dry desert heat never grew hotter or cooler. Everything simply _was_ , and Lucifer loathed it.

It had been two months exactly since he had left Earth behind to protect Chloe and all the other fragile creatures on Earth from his charges in this realm. He had tracked the passage of time in much the same way he tracked the demons and the damned in Hell: he merely thought of it and he Knew. There were some perks to being a celestial, even when trapped in the bowels of Hell, and knowledge was one of them. It was a good thing, too, since time in Hell passed differently to time on Earth, moving faster or slower in an unpredictable ebb and flow.

Lucifer meandered slowly through the passageways of Hell, passing rooms of torture mingled with rough rock columns as he moved, feeling the human souls within and the demons overseeing them. Nothing happened in Hell that he did not know about, as long as he was within the realm, and Lucifer positively hated every Dad-damned second of it.

This new imprisonment in Hell felt worse than his first interminable captivity. After all, he was much more aware of what he was missing out on, and had very little to occupy his time.

He had passed countless millennia in plotting the overthrow of his Father and the Silver City. He had delighted himself in plans of exacting revenge for the uncountable slights that had been wrought against him by his celestial family. It had been his main diversion for much of his reign in Hell. But he had no desire for revenge now. In truth, he had little desire for much at all now that he had returned once more to Hell.

Since returning, Lucifer had not taken a hand in the moment-to-moment torturing of souls that had once occupied his eternal time as the Lord of Hell. Since his return from Earth, he had found that he had very little desire to punish the damned. He’d barely interested himself in the squabbles and bickering of the demons he ruled over, only bestirring himself when he absolutely had to. In fact, one of the sycophantic creatures was creeping along behind him even now, moss-furred and multi-eyed, enumerating the seemingly uncountable complaints of the demons over whom Lucifer ruled through a wide mouth toothed with razor blades. Not that Lucifer was listening to it, really. He preferred to pass his time in memories now.

He had spent years on Earth, experiencing every luxury and deprivation that he could get his hands on, and he had enjoyed them all. He had indulged in every single one of the Seven Deadly Sins, often more than one at a time, but it wasn’t to those experiences that his thoughts drifted. No, he thought of Mazikeen, his faithful demon lieutenant now trapped on Earth. He thought of Linda, his friend and therapist and the mother of his nephew, baby Charlie. He thought of his brother, Amenadiel, free to wander the Earthly plane with seemingly no consequences. He thought of the tiny mischievous child he’d grown fond of despite his better judgement, Trixie, and of Dan and Ella, humans he had come to appreciate through his work with the LAPD. But most of all, he thought of Chloe Decker, his Detective.

His Detective, who was strong and so determined to always do what was right. Much like Lucifer himself, she served justice above all else, although she nearly always took a different path to the meting of it than what he’d have chosen.

A faint smile lifted the corners of Lucifer’s mouth as he remembered his Detective. Of all the things on Earth he had to remember, she was the best.

And he had so very many memories of her to comb through that it was almost impossible to tire himself of reviewing them in the privacy of his own thoughts. Chloe laughing, Chloe angry, Chloe weeping, Chloe shooting him, Chloe sleeping, Chloe full of doubt, Chloe full of pleasure as she moved beneath him…

Best not to think of that one.

Lucifer’s Louboutins scuffed softly in the ashes on the rocky ground below as he walked through the seemingly endless corridors of dark stone pillars and rooms of tortured human souls, heading towards the center of Hell and his throne rising impossibly high into Hell’s sky, overlooking his kingdom. Behind him, the demon’s many legs scuttled along, kicking the ash into a fine cloud around it. Lucifer sneered slightly, glad the creature had the sense to stay a foot back from its monarch as it continued its soliloquy, its razor-blade teeth flashing in the dim twilight haze of Hell.

He knew things on Earth had gone well since he’d left it behind two months before, because he had let his awareness touch the very edge of the reality that surrounded those for whom he cared. He didn’t want to know the daily ins and outs of their lives; that would tempt him beyond his ability to withstand. He so frequently wanted to interfere, and he _could not_. He merely wanted to be sure that no demons had returned to harass them or, worse, escaped his watchful eye and stayed on Earth despite his orders to return to Hell.

But he knew that everyone was safe. Everyone was well. He was not _needed_ on Earth, no matter how much he might be _wanted_ there. 

And he was sharply, painfully aware of how much he was wanted there. It had been impossible not to sense the cloud of pain that surrounded those he cared for in the first few weeks that he'd been back in Hell. It had taken a long time for the sorrow to begin to fade from around his friends…even longer for it to lessen around his Detective. No real surprise there; he was still sunk deeply in his own silent, internal suffering as he embraced the reality that he would never see any of them ever again.

Someday, he knew, he would check in on them and find that someone was dead, gone on to Heaven and moved beyond his ability to sense. It was inevitable that those he cared for most deeply would be ones who would head to eternal peace; after all, he was an archangel, above all other aspects of his being. While he would, without a doubt, choose poorly for himself when offered a choice between right and wrong, those with whom he had most closely bonded on Earth were what could colloquially be called ‘good souls.’

Because of that, Lucifer knew that one day, he would lose Chloe Decker even more finally than he had when he left her behind on Earth to return to Hell. Because of that, he tried not to review the memories he held most deeply in his heart: the two of them twisting skin-to-skin, mouth-to-mouth, lost in love and bone-deep lust as they gave themselves, body and soul, to one another. 

“Dad-damnit,” he muttered.

“Did you say something, my Lord?” the demon behind him asked, pausing in its recitation.

“No,” Lucifer said emotionlessly, letting the word drop between them like a stone. There was a pause as if the creature were waiting for him to say more, and then it began speaking again. Lucifer sighed silently, reaching up to rub his hands across his face, his palms scraping softly against his five-o-clock shadow. He had always maintained it so carefully on Earth, primping and perfecting himself every day to ensure a pleasing physical appearance. In Hell, his appearance could change at a thought. His physical form was more a suggestion than a reality, especially in the realm in which he ruled absolutely. He could have made his face appear clean shaven or cultivated a Grizzly Adams’ beard, had he wished it. He could even have walked about in his Devil guise at all times. But Lucifer preferred the face his Detective had known, the face his Detective had loved. 

And, again, his thoughts had returned to Chloe Decker.

It had been a few days since he had last allowed his awareness to touch on the space around his Detective. Perhaps if he checked in on her, he would be able to let his mind move on to other thoughts. Perhaps he could even focus on the demon skittering along behind him, prattling incessantly. A quick check, just to be sure…

Her distress was so intense that Lucifer’s measured steps faltered, his shoes scuffing through the ash as he leaned out to press one hand against the torture mausoleum beside him. So much emotion, so many different feelings pressing in about her like onrushing waves crashing to the shore. Perhaps if he –

Lucifer pulled himself away with a physical jerk, stumbling in uncoordinated steps back until he crashed into another mausoleum behind him, the feel of the stone as cold as a block of ice despite the oppressive heat of the air surrounding him. The temptation to delve deeper, to see what was distressing his Detective, had almost gotten him. He had to remember why he wouldn’t let himself look any closer at the lives of those he had left behind on Earth: he _had_ to stay in Hell. Only a few weeks ago, he had felt a presence battering at the Gates. Even though he had moved at the speed of thought, by the time he had arrived, whomever had been testing the Gates to Hell was gone. Undoubtedly a demon, thinking to sneak away unobserved. Idiots, all of them; when he had first resumed his throne, he had tightened everything down to the point where he sometimes thought even dear old Dad would have a hard time getting into Hell. No demons would be sneaking out unobserved…so long as he stayed where he was.

He could not seek what was troubling his Detective. He could not tempt himself to leave behind his charges again. Not so soon. Probably not for a few thousand years, long past Chloe Decker’s lifespan.

“My Lord?” The demon sounded like it had been repeating itself for some time, and Lucifer could see a gleam in its many eyes as it peered at him, like it was assessing him for weakness. He had seen more and more demons eyeing him with the same kind of evaluating look, judging him.

He had let it slide, but it was happening much more frequently. This demon’s mouth moved slightly, its razor-blade teeth flashing, clawed hands rising up into a position that would allow it to take a swipe at its King. 

Lucifer pushed away from the torture room behind him, reaching out to destroy the demon with a single touch. The creature exploded into burning ashes, falling to the floor in a small pile that eventually blended into the rest of the ash scattered along the rocky floors of Hell. A shudder ran through him; he had tried so hard throughout his entire existence to avoid killing anyone. Even during the war in Heaven, he had sought only to wound…

This demon would make the third life that had been taken by him. First, his own brother, Uriel, for threatening the life of his Detective. Second, the murderous Cain who had tried to kill not only him but had risked his Detective’s as well. And now, a demon that he had taken under his aegis to guide as King. His breath hitched and hitched again. He could feel a faint tremor beginning in his hands, the hands that he had used to -

He sucked in a quick breath, forcing himself to calmness despite the desire to let his emotions ride him. He had done what _had_ to be done. The demon had been readying itself to attack, and while no demon could truly grievously injure an archangel, there was no reason to allow them to start taking swipes at him.

He gave a frustrated sigh as he realized he would need to assign a new demon to the role of collecting and delivering the complaints of the other demons, but that was a problem he could deal with later. Lucifer resettled his suit jacket with a little shrug of his shoulders and a tug at his cuffs, and continued his slow, eternal passage through Hell.

* * * * *

“So, Chloe,” Dr. Linda Martin said, her voice in the soothing therapist cadence she used during their scheduled appointments, crossing one hand over the other and placing them in her lap, “how are you adjusting to everything?”

Chloe had started seeing Linda professionally after the first three horrible weeks that followed Lucifer’s departure. She had needed someone to talk to, and Linda was not only a good friend, but also a trained psychotherapist. It was a comfort to Chloe, being able to work through her painful emotions and also help support her friend by paying for the therapy sessions.

Chloe swallowed hard, taking a moment before she spoke. Her emotions had been on a bit of a hair-trigger the last few weeks. She knew it was hormonal, but that didn’t make it any less awful to burst into tears when she ran out of Saltines or to start shouting when Dan forgot to pick up a promised cherry cheese Danish one morning when he came to pick up Trixie for school.

“I…am…managing,” Chloe said, speaking each word slowly as she settled more comfortably onto the patient couch and crossed her legs at the ankle. “I’m going to have to tell my Lieutenant soon that I’m pregnant, and I’m…”

“Dreading it?” Linda prompted after Chloe’s hesitation stretched past a minute.

“Not looking forward to it, that’s for sure.” Chloe rubbed her fingertips against the knees of her black cotton work pants, staring down at Linda’s peacock green four-inch pumps, admiring the color against the other woman’s pale skin. Chloe sighed, looking up to meet Linda’s frank gaze. “I hate desk duty.”

“Ah,” Linda said with sudden understanding. “You prefer being in the middle of the action.”

“Yeah.”

“Which isn’t advisable when you’re carrying a concealed human.”

Chloe laughed softly, as Linda had intended her to, and shook her head. “I just keep thinking how lucky I’ve been. I mean, I still have the nausea and exhaustion, but my ob/gyn says that everything is developing perfectly naturally. Considering I might be carrying the _literal_ Son of Satan, having a boring, predictable pregnancy is really reassuring.”

Linda raised her eyebrows in agreement, tapping one finger lightly against her lap as she considered what to say next. “Amenadiel told me he still hasn’t been able to reach Lucifer. He said he’s tried twice more since he first made an attempt. The Gates are still intact.”

“Oh,” Chloe said, slumping slightly. She hadn’t known that Amenadiel had made more attempts to get into Hell. She could understand now why he had decided not to tell her. Heaviness at the realization was settling on her like a weighted blanket, pressing her deeper into the plush softness of the patients’ couch.

No matter how stupid it was, some part of her had hoped that Amenadiel would eventually be able to make contact with Lucifer. She didn’t really have an expectation for what would happen once Lucifer knew, but she knew _something_ would happen. Instead, Hell was blocked from them and she was now eight weeks pregnant. She had accepted that she would be a single mom; she hadn’t expected Lucifer to step in and become the father to their baby that Dan was to Trixie. It would have been out of character for him, after all. But she had been holding on to the hope that Lucifer might at least check on her during the pregnancy once he knew. She had been holding on to that slim hope for the last few days, and the crushing pain of realizing that there was really no chance that Lucifer would find out about the pregnancy settled onto her, heavy and awful.

Linda rose silently from her chair, stepping over to a box of tissues to retrieve a couple for Chloe. 

“Thanks,” Chloe whispered, dabbing lightly at her eyes, unsurprised to find she was crying again. It had been happening a lot lately. She sniffed softly, the sound almost lost in the sudden trilling of her phone from inside the purse on the floor at the side of the couch.

“Chloe,” Linda said on a sigh, “what did we agree to about phones during session?”

“That I’m a police officer and can’t turn it off,” Chloe said unrepentantly, fishing the cell out of her purse and answering it despite Linda’s pinch-lipped look of annoyance.

“Chloe, it’s Dan. We have a body.”

“I’ll ride with you. I can be there in twenty; I’m leaving now,” Chloe said, rising from the couch and disconnecting the call. “I have to go, Linda. Next week, okay?”

“Chloe –” Linda began, but Chloe was already rushing out the door.

The drive to the precinct was surprisingly rough, the news of the inevitability of her pregnancy going below Lucifer’s radar crashing over her again and again like waves in the ocean. Chloe made use of the tissues Linda had given her and had herself mostly pulled back together by the time she parked in the underground garage. 

She was surprised to see Dan waiting next to his car in the garage, not far from the empty spot she pulled into. The garage wasn’t air conditioned, unlike the bullpen upstairs. For Dan to have foregone the comforts of modern air conditioning to wait by his police vehicle meant that he was impatient to get going. She didn’t waste any time checking her face in the mirror, knowing she would have swollen eyes and a red nose from her crying jag and hoping Dan would keep his comments to himself. She hopped out of her own vehicle and locked it, moving across the parking garage in quick, sure steps.

“What’s up?” she asked as she joined Dan. 

“Remember Andrea Miller?” Dan asked, and Chloe raised her eyebrows. That case had been dead in the water since they had been assigned to it. Ella had run the blood under Andrea’s nails, but there hadn’t been any match. It wasn’t surprising, since the only way to get a match was to have a criminal already in the system. It was likely that Andrea had been killed by a friend or family member, and if it were a crime of passion committed by a first-time criminal, they wouldn’t have been in the system. 

To make matters worse, none of the neighbors had seen or heard anything, none of her friends or family could think of anyone who might have wanted to hurt Andrea or steal her baby; even the baby’s father had checked out clean. He’d chosen not to be a part of the infant’s life, had even filled out court documents to that end. The case was frustrating, but a normal part of police life.

“Of course,” Chloe said, making a ‘go ahead’ circle with one hand.

“We have another like that. Single mother, missing baby girl.”

Chloe’s stomach dropped and she tightened her fingers on her purse strap where it rested against her collarbone. “Are we thinking this is the same as Andrea Miller’s murder?”

“Can’t say for sure until we get to the scene,” Dan said, his eyebrows drawing down, “but I think it’s pretty likely. Looks like another struggle, another strangulation…and unless they have friends or acquaintances in common, then it might be another dead end.”

Chloe shook her head, refusing to take a defeatist attitude right off the bat. “Maybe the two cases aren’t connected at all. I mean, it’s possible that they’re just similar.” Dan didn’t look convinced, and Chloe jerked open the passenger side door, climbing into the car. When Dan joined her, she asked, “Anything on Andrea Miller’s missing son?”

“Alex Miller,” Dan said, starting the car and pulling out. “No. We’ve been trying to keep our feelers out on the illegal baby market, but it’s not exactly easy to get information from the sellers, even if you look like a legitimate buyer.”

“That poor baby,” Chloe murmured, unconsciously resting the fingertips of one hand against her still-flat abdomen. Dan didn’t miss the movement, and his sigh filled the car. Chloe sat up straighter, looking over at him with a questioning look.

“Maybe you should take yourself off this case,” Dan began, gesturing with one hand at her abdomen, still cradled lightly by her right hand. Chloe immediately jerked her hand away as if it had been burned, clenching her fingers into a fist. 

“No. I’m fine.”

“Chlo, c’mon,” Dan began, but she cut him off.

“No. I am _fine_. Let’s just get there, please.”

The rest of the drive was silent. Whatever else Dan wanted to say, he had the sense to keep it to himself. Chloe stared resolutely out the passenger side window, refusing to even make accidental eye-contact with her ex. 

When they arrived on scene, Chloe felt her heart sinking. Another nice-looking urban neighborhood with either neatly trimmed lawns or landscaped gravel-and-rock yards, and flowers or shrubs in the front beds. Another small but well-kept house, another room with obvious signs of a struggle, and another woman strangled to death.

“This is Eloise Swinn, 28,” Ella said, joining Chloe and Dan beside the body. “You remember the Andrea Miller murder a few weeks ago? This is like a snapshot of the same thing. There’s been a struggle – see where she knocked the kitchen table into the wall? And then they went into the counter, but that’s not as obvious at first glance. She hit hard enough that she left traces of blood on the corner of the counter there,” Ella gestured at a tagged area on the counter’s edge where a dark stain was visible before turning back to the body, “and finally ended up here. Lividity and rigor suggest she was killed sometime between 10pm and 2am. Her daughter is missing. Lily Swinn, six weeks old.”

The Saltines Chloe had eaten before her appointment with Linda twisted in her stomach and she stumbled out of the house at a quick walk, stopping once her shoes hit the neatly mown grass of the front lawn. She breathed deeply in through her mouth and out through her nose, drawing the hot, smoggy LA air in like a life-saving miasma. She had just about gotten her stomach back under control when Dan joined her, standing just behind her on the sidewalk that led up to the front porch.

“Chloe? Are you…handling it?”

“I’m fine,” Chloe said tersely, turning to face Dan. “No vomit. Just…just an iffy moment.”

“Chloe, I know you don’t want to excuse yourself from this case, but I really think – ”

“Dan, I _know_ what you think. You don’t need to say it. But I can handle this. I know I’m going to have to tell Lieutenant McGregor about this pregnancy soon, because it’s going to get pretty damn obvious in a few weeks, but for right now, I just want to…to find whoever’s responsible for this. Maybe we can still get the babies back, okay? I want to keep working this case.”

Dan shook his head, but he raised his hands to shoulder height in an accepting shrug before heading back into the house. Chloe stood outside for another few minutes, one hand unconsciously rubbing gently at her abdomen as she stared down the quiet, neatly-manicured street.


	5. Chapter 5

“My Lord?” Demons could not sound meek, not really. It wasn’t in their nature. But this creature was giving it a good try.

“Yes?” Lucifer said, not turning. He was standing on a rise of rock, overlooking a section of Hell mostly populated by demons. The torture rooms were far behind him, but if he turned to look, they would be obvious: a field of small square structures, like an endless concrete ghetto, interspersed with rough columns of dark stone and a never-ending pattering of ashes. Millions upon millions of human souls, trapped in their own guilt for eternity. And ahead, millions upon millions of demons, endlessly engaged in the three F’s: fighting, feeding, and fucking.

“My Lord, I’ve been sent by many of the others to speak to you. We – they – we would like to ask why you have been killing so many of us since you returned?”

Lucifer’s hands clenched into fists, and he fought to relax them back to his sides again, trying to present an unaffected demeanor to his subject. He was deeply disturbed by how quickly smiting demons had become the new normal for him. The first few had been almost painful: a life ended, a creature gone. He had hoped that killing the first few demons that had tried to secretly attack him would encourage the others in Hell to back down…but that hadn’t happened.

Over the last few weeks, more and more demons had been trying to take him down, coming at him from dark corners or on seemingly empty vistas. He’d tried actually fighting a few of them, to see if the reminder of the strength and indestructibility of an archangel would make the demons back down, but they had all fought on until it became obvious that Lucifer would either need to kill them or continue fighting for eternity.

“Because I want to,” he said, turning to face the demon and forcing a mad smile to his face. “If you’ll remember, I was enjoying a long-deserved vacation when a few hundred of you decided to come and force my hand.”

“Yes, my Lord, but that was not of my doing – ” the demon began, but Lucifer stepped closer and the creature’s thick-lipped mouth snapped shut, its six bulging eyeballs protruding even more grotesquely from its skull.

“No, it was not. And yet I find myself disinterested in exactly _who_ deserves punishment. I mete it out when I feel it is deserved, and that seems to coincide with being _bothered_.”

The demon was obviously one of the smarter denizens of Hell. It took his point and immediately scuttled away, its multitude of centipede legs tapping over the rock as it ran from him, disappearing into the blind corners of the torture rooms in the space of a few seconds. At least it hadn’t tried to attack him.

Lucifer turned back to observing the demons below, his hands hanging loose at his sides, one leg bent slightly at the knee as he pressed the red sole of his Louboutin onto a small chunk of rock. He knew what his demons saw when they raised their eyes – or whatever that demon used for sight – to the rise of rock above them: an imposing archangel who would kill them if they stepped out of line again. Even if they had not been one of the few to trespass on Earth, punishment was being given without hesitation to anyone who crossed his path with a desire to interfere. It had taken them three months, but the demons of Hell were finally beginning to understand that their King wanted to be left alone. True, it meant an increase in interdemon squabbles, but Lucifer didn’t mind. As long as they didn’t bother _him_ with their problems or their regicide ambitions, he could be content.

Or, at least, as close to content as he got these days. With a frustrated sound, he kicked the small rock he’d been balancing his foot upon off the rise of rock. It tumbled down the steep slope before him, clattering for a long time before it finally hit bottom.

He had felt tension rising in all those he cared for on Earth. Each time he checked it, the waters around them felt muddier with emotions he could not clearly parse without going deeper. The worst was his Detective, though. Not only did he find it harder and harder to get a clear reading on her well-being, there was something else beginning to rise up. It was almost like seeing in double, a haze of…of _something_ wrapped around and throughout her thoughts and feelings. 

It scared him.

The fear shortened his already short temper, and the demons were feeling it. That was why he had chosen to stand apart on this hill. The temptation to destroy every demon in hell, to wash his hands of responsibility and return to Earth, was almost overwhelming. He needed to get that impulse under control before he acted on it. After all, this was not his realm. He ruled it, but it belonged to the demons, just as Earth belonged to the humans. He could not kill every sentient being in the realm just to free himself from responsibility. It would be a true genocide, and he would be turning his back completely on his nature as an archangel. He could not wipe out an entire population just because it was no longer convenient to rule them.

No matter how tempting the idea was.

* * * * *

“Decker? You wanted to speak with me?” Acting-Lieutenant McGregor was leaning out of his office door, his dark eyes hard as he looked at Chloe across the bullpen. Chloe caught Dan watching from his own desk as she pushed to her feet, giving her suit jacket a little tug to smooth any wrinkles that might have formed while she was sitting at her desk.

“Yes, sir,” she said, moving towards his office. He turned and headed to his desk. She followed him in and hesitated a second before reaching back and shutting the door. McGregor raised a single dark eyebrow at her, lacing his fingers together and resting his hands on his desk on top of a pile of paperwork, the contrast between his dark fingers and the white paper beneath catching Chloe’s eyes for a second, distracting her from the reason she’d come to the acting-Lieutenant’s office.

“Something wrong, Detective Decker?” he prompted when she’d been standing silently for several seconds.

“No, sir.” Chloe took a breath before sitting down in the chair in front of the acting-Lieutenant’s desk. She just needed to get the facts out there. Just spit it out. “I just wanted to let you know that I…am…pregnant.”

“Oh. That’s it? I had figured it out, Decker. It’s not like I haven’t seen a few growing bellies in my time. My wife and I had four boys together, after all.” 

Chloe winced, resisting the urge to cover her abdomen with her hands. She knew she had started to show in the last two weeks; Google had told her this was pretty common in second pregnancies. Still, it wasn’t too obvious if she stuck to looser shirts. At least, that’s what she’d thought. 

McGregor’s eyebrows climbed as the silence stretched, and he unclasped his hands, shuffling some papers around on his desk before clasping his hands once more. “Okay. So. You’re…”

“Requesting desk duty. I would also like to request that I be allowed to stay on the two cases I’m working with Dan.”

“That would be Detective Espinoza. I don’t know, Decker, that seems…” Acting-Lieutenant McGregor trailed off, reaching up to scratch lightly at short his salt-and-pepper curls before dropping his hands back to his desk and spreading them wide, palms up. “I mean, you’re going to be physically limited soon.”

“I understand that I can’t do a lot of on-scene work, sir. I just want to stay with the cases until we can get an answer.”

“All right,” McGregor said, sighing. “I’ll allow it. And you can help Detective Espinoza with all the paperwork, too, of course.” McGregor picked up a file folder from the edge of his desk, holding it out towards Chloe. “Deliver this to him, please. He’s got a body.”

Chloe took in a sharp breath, stifling the urge to ask questions. She took the folder, thanked McGregor, and left his office at a quick pace, waiting until she was out of sight before she flipped the folder open, reading as fast as she could.

Another woman. Another strangulation. Another missing baby. Damnit.

Andrea Miller and Eloise Swinn had no common friends or acquaintances. There was nothing to tie them together, except that they were single mothers with infants. Chloe was willing to bet a lot of money that this new victim would fit the profile. And that meant they had a serial killer on their hands.

* * * * *

“This doesn’t look like desk duty,” Dan said as Chloe jerked open the passenger side door of his car. She’d flagged him down as he was pulling out of a parking spot in the underground garage, and while he hadn’t looked happy about her fast approach, he also hadn’t peeled out to escape her.

“Dan, I just need to see the scene, okay?” Chloe leaned low, sticking her head through the open passenger side door, her ponytail sliding down over one shoulder as she met Dan’s doubtful gaze. “I’ll let you take lead on everything else, and I’ll sit happily at my desk and fill out paperwork all day long, but I need to see this scene.”

Dan’s lips pressed and he tapped on finger on the gear shift as he watched Chloe climb in and buckle up, maneuvering the seatbelt underneath the gentle rise of her lower abdomen. Chloe caught Dan’s stare and jerked at the material of her shirt until it was scrunched up in front of the small bump of her growing womb.

“Come on, Dan. Let’s go, please.”

Dan swore, but he put the car back into Drive and exited the parking garage, the tires squealing as he pressed down on the accelerator harder than necessary. Thankfully, he kept all of his comments to himself as they drove to the scene.

Chloe felt a kind of numb acceptance slide through her as she saw the middle-class neighborhood that the newest victim had been found in. This killer definitely had a type, down to the neighborhood. The lawn of the house they pulled up to was groomed rocks and gravel, but there were a few opportunistic weeds beginning to peek above them. They hadn’t grown out of control yet, but it was clear it had been at least a week or two since someone had attended to the yard. 

Ella was waiting in the shade of the covered front porch when they pulled up, avoiding the intense midday sun and some of the heat that came along with it. Her hands were empty, clasped together like she didn’t know what to do with them if she didn’t have a job to occupy them, and her face was somber.

“What have we got?” Dan asked, stepping ahead of Chloe almost as if he was trying to shield her from the house.

“Lindsay Cramer, 34, apparently attacked yesterday evening just after…after her Uber driver dropped her off. He was the last one to see her alive.” Ella stopped, swallowing hard. “She was coming home from the hospital. Her son is missing. Devin Cramer, three days old.”

Dan had his arms around Chloe before she even realized she was swaying on her feet. He slid one arm supportively around her back and helped her back to his car. With a bit of maneuvering, he got her into the passenger seat, her feet braced in the doorwell and her elbows on her knees, head hanging loosely. A second later, he’d turned the car on and set the air conditioner to arctic blast.

Chloe felt like an absolute idiot. She’d been making an effort to stay hydrated and to eat three times a day and had thought the fainting spell from weeks before would be a one-off. And, true, she hadn’t actually passed out this time, but she had definitely greyed out for a few seconds, and worse, she’d done it _on the scene of a crime_ , like a rookie seeing their first corpse.

She could hear Dan calling Ella over, and then felt a small, soft hand resting gently on the back of her neck.

“Hey, Chloe, you okay?” Ella sounded concerned, and Chloe lifted her head to meet the other woman’s gaze. Ella’s dark brows were drawn low, her mouth pinched as she took in Chloe’s pallor.  
“I’m fine,” Chloe insisted, trying to make the words true through repetition. “I have…I just got overwhelmed for a second. I…”

“Hey, don’t feel bad,” Ella said reassuringly, speaking quickly as she squatted on the curb next to the open passenger door of the car. “It’s actually pretty common to have dizzy spells in the first trimester. My cousin, Elena, gets the worst dizzy spells in the first few months of _all_ her pregnancies. She just had baby number five last year, and I think the dizziness got worse with each baby.”

“Wait, stop. You know I’m pregnant? Who told you?” Chloe demanded.

“No one. I mean, Chloe, I’m not blind. Hello.” Ella gestured toward Chloe’s abdomen; the obvious small bulge that was made even more obvious by her shirt being twisted behind her from Dan shoving her into the passenger seat. Chloe jerked at the shirt angrily, loosening the material and scrunching it in front of her abdomen to hide the bulge. “Also, the nausea. I mean, I’ve watched you try not to toss your cookies multiple times, especially when Harris comes through with a hot meatball sub.”

“Oh, God,” Chloe muttered, rubbing her hand across her mouth for a brief second.

“Sorry, yeah, no more meatball sub talk,” Ella said with a sympathetic grimace. She shook her head quickly, tapping her fingers lightly against Chloe’s knee. “Look, the point is, it’s pretty obvious that you’re plus-one these days. And…uh…am I allowed to say…you know, the L-word?”

“Love?” Chloe asked.

“Lucifer.”

“Ah.” Chloe sat back in the seat, leaning her head against the headrest and closing her eyes. 

“It is Lucifer’s, right? Is that…is that why he left? Because I’m totally ready to be super angry at him if he ran out on you just because –”

“No! No,” Chloe said, opening her eyes and raising a hand to cut Ella off. “He didn’t know. And, yeah, it is his.”

“Hey, the Big Guy works in mysterious ways, you know?” Ella said, trying to smile encouragingly at Chloe. “I know right now, it doesn’t feel like there’s a reason for this, but I know there is. I promise, God’s watching out for you.”

“Yeah, that’s what scares me,” Chloe muttered, and Ella’s brows drew down in confusion. Chloe quickly waved a hand, muttering “never mind” before Ella could pursue it. There was a pause as Chloe rubbed her hands against her pants legs and Ella tapped her index finger against the side of her shoe, still squatted down to put herself at eye-level with Chloe.

“So…how far along are you?” Ella asked, her voice gentle.

Chloe hesitated, and then nodded, giving in to the inevitable. “Twelve weeks.”

“Hey, awesome!” Ella said, perking up. “Almost in the second trimester! If you’re anything like Elena, the dizzy spells and nausea will vanish in the next few weeks. You’re about to hit the ‘glowing’ stage!” Ella paused, worrying her lower lip between her teeth for a moment before speaking cautiously. “Does…does Lucifer know?”

“No. He left before I found out, and I can’t contact him.”

“Can’t, or won’t?” Ella asked, raising her brows.

“ _Can’t_ ,” Chloe insisted. “He’s…he’s not where anyone can reach him, okay? I’ve accepted the way things are. This,” Chloe touched the small bump swelling her lower abdomen with her fingertips, “is happening. And I’m handling it by myself. Of course, Dan is doing whatever he can to help, taking extra days with Trixie…and I’m going to have to pick up a bunch of old books to remind myself of the early days with a baby. I mean, God, it’s been _years_ since I even _thought_ about baby things…”

“Talk to Linda!” Ella suggested, her smiling widening. “She’s got baby stuff fresh on her mind. I’ll bet she could even lend you some books to help fire up the old memory banks.”

“That’s actually a good idea,” Chloe said. “I’ll do that.”

“And you won’t be alone after the baby arrives, Chloe. I mean it. You’ll have Dan, of course, and I’m here for you, too. I’ll come over every week to help with laundry and cleaning and whatever else you need. Someone to hold the baby so you can shower or take a nap? I’m your girl. I’ve got tons of experience, thanks to my cousins’ babies.”

“Ella, you don’t have to do that,” Chloe began, but Ella gave her head a single, sharp shake.

“Nuh uh. I’m doing it. This isn’t negotiable. I’m gonna help out. I’ve got your back, okay? Tribe forever.”

Chloe blinked hard. Damn, there went the waterworks again. Those stupid hormones... 

“Thank you,” she said, her voice small. Ella reached out, rubbing one of Chloe’s knees reassuringly, and then rose to her feet as she heard the crunch of Dan approaching across the loose rocks and gravel of the front lawn.

“Doing better?” he asked, and Chloe nodded. “Okay, awesome. Uh, I think maybe you should just stay here…I need Ella to come in, though.”

“Yeah, my legs are starting to go numb anyway,” Ella said, stepping from foot to foot and shaking out her legs as if trying to rid herself of pins and needles.

Chloe opened her mouth for a second, ready to argue, and then shut it. She had to admit that this was beyond her ability to deal with right now. A woman had come home from the hospital after delivering her baby and been killed before she even had a chance to settle in. It was a little too close to home for her to handle.

“I’ll talk to the neighbors,” she said, reaching out to twist the keys out of the ignition, shutting Dan’s car off. She stood up and handed him the keys, tugging her shirt straight before heading across the crunching rocks of the front lawn to approach the neighbor’s house.


	6. Chapter 6

Lucifer had tried to stop counting the days. What was the point in keeping track, after all? It wouldn’t change anything. And yet here he was, touching the emotions around Maze – murderous, joyfully furious, and amused, Maze’s usual blend – and realizing that it had been eighteen and a half weeks since he last saw any of those on Earth for whom he cared.

The only positives of tracking the passage of time was that he was viscerally aware of the rise of tensions in his demons increasing day by day. He had tempered himself, stopping the slaughtering of the merely annoying and reserving it for those actively challenging him, which was a thankfully small number, and yet the rumbles of unrest continued. He could feel it rising in Hell, an incorporeal heat that made the sweltering air around him feel positively cool. His subjects were unhappy with their King.

It had been millennia since he’d last had to put down an uprising of demons that thought they could wrest control away from the archangel that led Hell. Honeybees had a better chance of overpowering a grizzly bear. And, yet, the unrest continued to simmer.

Lucifer sat upon his throne, a stone edifice rising far above the demonic creatures and the mausoleums of torture below. From so high, he could oversee almost his entire realm with his physical sight, let alone with his angelic perception. And what Lucifer saw was not good.

“I knew I should’ve destroyed Dromos the moment I recognized him on Earth,” Lucifer muttered, fingers tapping lightly on the stone armrests of his throne. The demon had long been his servant, but something had changed when he’d come to Earth in the corpse of the priest, Kinley, who had caused so much strife between himself and his Detective. It had not escaped Lucifer’s notice that Dromos was at the center of the recent unrest in Hell. He knew that the time was coming that he would have to do _something_ about it, but he was hesitant to do what needed doing.  
Dromos was placed high in the hierarchy of demons. He was known and respected by many, and had become more so since his return from Earth. Lucifer worried that putting him down without a proper challenge by Dromos would lead to more unrest.

The point of his returning to Hell was to keep the demons in their own realm. _Alive_ in their own realm. Wiping out Dromos could lead to multitudes of demons trying to rise up against their King, and if he didn’t obliterate every part of the uprising, then the dissatisfaction in the demons would continue. 

Lucifer had to stop this idiocy before he depopulated Hell of its native denizens.

“Damnit,” he swore softly to himself, closing his eyes for a moment to rest both them and his mind, needing a moment away from this constant nagging worry about his demons. 

Almost against his own will, his thoughts began to drift away from the problem at hand. As always, they went to his Detective. He had checked on her emotions just days before, but one more quick check wouldn’t hurt anything…

He was growing used to the confusion that surrounded his Detective these days. Finding her was less about looking for her unique signature in the world and instead about finding the muddy mess of her signature swirled with something else, pulsing and strong and impossible to ignore. He had no idea what the signature overlaying that of his Detective might be, but it had grown stronger over the months. It…worried him. 

_‘One peek,’_ he thought, fingers tightening into fists on the stone armrests of his throne, fingernails biting into his palms in a brief sting of pain. _‘A second. That’s all. Just her face.’_

It was foolish. It was unwise.

It was happening.

For just a moment, Lucifer delved deeper, letting his awareness settle on Earth in an almost physical weight. In Hell, he faded to near invisibility on his rocky throne high above the plains below, his physical form following his concentration as he strove with all of himself towards Chloe.

He saw her, sitting on her couch in her apartment, the windows dark but for the faint glow of distant street lights. She was alone, no small offspring curling beside her like an oversized kitten. She was holding something in her lap…papers of some kind. Perhaps a stack of files? He couldn’t see with real clarity unless he pulled himself fully into the world, and he wouldn’t do that. He had to remain in Hell, no matter how much he wanted to _be_ there in that apartment, beside his Detective in the dim light thrown by the fire she had built up in the fireplace across from her.

But there she was, her dark blond hair pulled into a messy ponytail. Bits fell in gentle waves along the sides of her face, and she reached up to tuck them behind her ears without looking up from the things in her lap. She was worrying her lower lip with her teeth, and Lucifer felt a sigh rising from his throat as he wished he could worry that lip with his own teeth. 

Ah, he needed to go. This was going to tempt him beyond his ability to withstand. He should go. He was going.

Chloe shut the folders – books? – with a sudden motion and began to stand, grunting with effort as she rose to her feet, one hand bracing against the cushion below her as she rose awkwardly.

Lucifer slammed back into Hell with a jolt, his entire being ringing like a bell.

As Chloe had stood and straightened, Lucifer had seen…her. And, that would certainly explain the muddying of her emotional signature, wouldn’t it? 

Detective Chloe Decker was pregnant.

A slow roil of fury began to build in Lucifer, sharpening like a knife until it felt like it would cut him in two.

He’d been gone for _five months_. How long after his departure had she waited before seeking the comfort of another’s bed? He was no expert on human gestation, but given the size of her burgeoning belly, she had to be at least halfway through her pregnancy. Had she even waited for the bed they shared to grow cold before she went into another’s embrace?

He had known he was utterly replaceable. Hadn’t he heard it with his own ears, over and over, how he was nothing more than a single night of impossibly good sex? Chloe had gotten that, and then she had moved on with her life.

Had her confession of love even been real, or just a way to ensure she could finagle the one thing she most desired before he left for good?

What an absolute fool he’d been, daring to think that someone like his Detective might actually feel something for someone like _him_. When, in his time on Earth or since his return to Hell, had he done anything to make him worthy of her consideration?

Sorrow replaced the anger in slow pulses, making him slowly curl in around his own chest, his arms wrapping tightly around himself as his forehead pressed into his knees where he sat upon his cold throne. He reached desperately for the anger, but it was ashes. All he could feel was a deep pain, the knowledge that he had not meant nearly as much to his Detective – _the_ Detective – as he had thought.

He let out a bellow born of his overwhelming pain, , the sound bouncing off the stone columns below him, echoing back at him in mocking waves. And the sound of his own pain bouncing back at him over and over brought his anger back sharply. He reached for it and grabbed hold, stoking that flame. It was better than the pain.

Used. He had been _used_. He had let himself believe once more that he was important, and once more, he had been shown that he was just something to be discarded. He was a means to an end. He was a _tool_. The Detective had used him just as his Father had used him, and both had disregarded him as soon as he was no longer necessary.

He felt his physical being reflecting the sudden murderous rage, his human guise burning and flaking into ash, falling to the rocky ground far below. It was not just his face changing, he realized as the heat of his betrayed anger rolled through him. His suit jacket and button-up shirt were also going to ash, revealing the red, monstrous form of his devilish body below.

He had not adjusted fully to this new form being a reality, and it was startling to see red, clawed hands instead of his own carefully manicured fingers. But this form felt right at the moment.

In a thought, Lucifer was down among his demons. He stormed through them, flinging them from his path with powerful thrusts of his wings, unsurprised to find them once more membranous and dragon-like. He hadn’t felt this level of betrayal since his Father had cast him through the darkness of reality, out of the Silver City in a fall that felt like it went on for uncountable ages. He hadn’t felt pain like this since he landed in Hell, a broken and forgotten wreck.

Demons were scattering as they saw what their King was doing, claws scraping across rock and multitudinous legs skittering through ash as they tried to clear a path. 

Lucifer followed them, flinging scaled and furred and gelatinous creatures from his path even as they ran from him.

They had the sense not to fight him. He had beaten the fight out of most of them long ago. 

But given the recent unrest, perhaps a reminder was in order.

So Lucifer continued to move through the hoards, flinging them with his wings and, if they moved out of his way too slowly, his clawed hands.

Over and over, his mind filled with the image of his Detective – _his_ Detective – heavy with another’s child.

It had been a mistake to look closer.

* * * * *

“Decker, are you almost done in there? Didn’t you say the ultrasound was at 2?” Maze was shouting from outside the bathroom door, and Chloe sighed. She knew it had been a mistake to ask Maze to come along to the twenty-week ultrasound to find out the baby’s sex. Chloe still wasn’t sure if she actually wanted to know, but once she’d presented the idea to Maze, the demon had been ecstatic at being included.

She had moved back in with Chloe the month before, and Chloe had to admit that the added income had been a relief. She hadn’t realized how tight things had gotten on her single salary until Maze started adding her own money towards the bills. 

As Maze’s fist pounded against the bathroom door, Chloe had to admit that perhaps the relief of monetary help wasn’t enough to make it worth having Maze in the apartment again. “Decker! It’s 1:30! Are we doing this, or not?”

Chloe gave up on trying to make her suit jacket close in front of her belly. It was impossible to deny that she was pregnant these days. Her belly stuck out further than her boobs now, and her work jackets no longer met over it. 

She turned to the bathroom door and unlocked it, opening it just as Maze was raising her fist to bang again.

“All right!” Maze said, leaping back from the bathroom and moving towards the front door. “Let’s go find out what kind of genitals the hellspawn has!”

“Please stop calling it that,” Chloe muttered, gathering her purse and unplugging her cell phone from the charger. She checked it to make sure she hadn’t missed anything important while she was struggling to button her suit jacket, and saw texts from Ella, Dan, and Linda waiting on the screen for her. “What the hell…?”

“What?” Maze came back, her dark eyebrows lowering. “What is it?”

“Oh, for…” Chloe held the phone up, showing Maze the text from Linda. “Everyone apparently wanted to wish me good luck and remind me that they want to know the baby’s gender.”

“Sex,” Maze corrected. “The genitals are the sex. Gender is a completely different thing.”

“Fine, okay, _sex_ ,” Chloe agreed, wanting the conversation to be done. “I can’t believe how invested everyone is in this. I mean, I haven’t even decided yet if I even want to know – ”

“You do,” Maze said, cutting Chloe off. “ _I_ do, and you have to find out so I can find out.”

“That’s not really how it works,” Chloe began, but Maze spun around, locking a glare on Chloe that shut her up instantly. It was sometimes all too easy to see the demon lurking beneath the human guise Maze wore every day.

“I am stuck here on Earth, dealing with humans every day of my life. I swore my loyalty to my King, and he left me here to return to our home without me. My best friend is almost always busy with her own tiny human and the one human I actually really like left to ‘find herself’ and now you’re telling me I don’t get to know the baby’s genitals?”

Chloe sucked in a breath, trying to figure out the best way to respond.

“We are finding out,” Maze said decisively. “Now let’s get in the car and go. I have somewhere to be this evening.”

“Right. Yeah. I mean, what kind of rights do I have about deciding on finding out the gender? I’m just carrying this kid,” Chloe muttered, digging her keys out of her purse as she followed Maze to the car.

“Sex!” Maze shouted, not even turning to look at Chloe.

“Okay, _sex!_ ” Chloe shouted back, unlocking the car with a defeated sigh.

* * * * *

“Just a few more pictures, mama,” the ultrasound tech said in a soothing tone, her pretty face stretching into a comforting smile as she slid the ultrasound probe over the warm gel on Chloe’s belly. “And then we can see what Baby’s got between their legs.”

“Can’t you do the pictures later?” Maze grumbled from her seat across the room, slumped low in a chair with her arms crossed belligerently over her chest. She had been excited when the ultrasound first began, but when it became apparent that the tech planned to check the baby’s growth and development before checking the sex, Maze had settled grumpily into a chair and refused to get up.

“Almost done,” the tech soothed, continuing to tap keys on the ultrasound machine, taking snapshots of various bits of anatomy. 

“Sorry about her,” Chloe said. “She’s just…really excited.”

“I completely understand,” the tech said, giving Chloe a quick wink. “Sometimes it’s hard for partners to wait. They can sometimes be even more excited than mama.”

“Oh, she’s not –” Chloe began, but Maze hopped up and grinned, reaching out to grab one of Chloe’s hands in a firm grip.

“Yeah, that’s right. I’m just excited. Right, honey?” Maze grinned at Chloe, the expression manic. Chloe shut her eyes, breathing deeply as she tried to find the patience she’d need to survive this.

“All right, here we go,” the tech said, using the ultrasound wand to push a glob of goop from one side of Chloe’s belly to the other, twisting and adjusting the ultrasound wand. “Oh, baby’s being nice and cooperative today! Okay, look right here…” The tech moved something on the ultrasound machine and a tiny arrow appeared on the TV screen across the dim room, showing the same image that the ultrasound machine was showing. “You see this little dark slit right here? That’s a vulva. Congratulations, mama, you’re having a girl!”

Chloe let out a breath she hadn’t been aware she was holding. So, no Son of Satan gestating inside of her. 

“That is so _awesome_ ,” Maze breathed, dropping Chloe’s hand to cross the room and stare at the TV screen and the tiny arrow pointing to the baby’s genitalia. “A girl. That is so…” Maze trailed off, turning to look at Chloe. “You know he’d be excited about this too, right?”

Chloe’s eyes dropped away from Maze, closing tight as her hands clenched on either side of her body. The ultrasound tech, reading the sudden emotional change in the room, dropped the ultrasound wand back into the holder on the side of the ultrasound machine, grabbing a towel and beginning to mop the gel off of Chloe’s belly, muttering, “Let’s get you cleaned up, mama.”

As soon as the tech had finished and turned up the buzzing fluorescent lights, she left the room. Chloe rolled slowly to her side on the narrow exam table and pushed up on one elbow until she was able to finally sit up. 

“Maze, you don’t have to try to comfort me. We both know that Lucifer hates kids, and there’s no way he’d be excited about this.”

“Decker, don’t be stupid. Lucifer may not like kids, but this is _his_. He’d care. And you know he likes Trixie, and she’s not even his! Another little Decker girl…” Maze trailed off, shaking her head, her dark hair shining under the fluorescent lights of the exam room. “He’d be happy. I know him, okay? He’d be happy.”

Chloe jerked her shirt back down over her softly rounded abdomen, carefully standing from the exam table and remaining still until she was sure she wasn’t going to get a headrush from the positional change. 

“Maze, just stop. It doesn’t matter if he’d be happy or not. He’s not here. Let’s get out of here; I have a bunch of paperwork waiting for me at my desk and I might be able to get through some of it before I need to head out to pick Trixie up from school. Is there anywhere you need me to drop you?”

“Nope. I can find my own ride. I’ll probably be out of town for a few days; I have a bounty that I need to track down.”

“Oh. Okay.” Chloe hesitated, and then gave a single, quick nod. “Okay. Thanks for coming along.”

“Wouldn’t have missed it,” Maze said, turning to leave the exam room. “Oh, don’t forget to tell everyone about the baby’s genitals!”

Chloe let out a small huff of air, not quite a laugh, and then dug her phone out, sending three quick “it’s a girl!” announcements off to the waiting parties before shoving her phone in her purse again and going to check out at the front desk of her obstetrician’s office.

It wasn’t until she was in the underground parking garage attached to the office, safely shut in her car with the a/c doing its level best to take the temperature in her car from sweltering to merely uncomfortable that she checked the replies to her announcement texts, and she felt her heart lodge in her throat as she read Dan’s message.

_Great news! I’m happy for you. We have another body, like the last three. I’ll update you when I can._

Chloe swore and then swore again, beating one palm against the steering wheel in frustration. Four new mothers, four stolen babies. Chloe pressed both of her palms against her own abdomen, sympathy and fear rising through her in equal amounts. Those poor women…

Chloe indulged herself for just a minute, letting herself break down in the privacy of the parking garage. Sympathy for the women gave way to sympathy for herself, alone and pregnant. Finally, she cried for the simple reality that she _missed_ Lucifer. She missed his terrible, poorly-timed jokes at crime scenes. She missed his awkward but well-intentioned interactions with Trixie. She missed his smile and the way he always called her “Detective” except when it really, really mattered. She just _missed_ him.

After a few minutes, she wiped her eyes, carefully clearing away the wet smears of mascara underneath them, and drove back to the precinct to return to the paperwork waiting for her.


	7. Chapter 7

“I do _not_ want a baby shower,” Chloe repeated for the third time, watching the desperate pleading light in Ella’s eyes begin to fade. 

“Chloe,” Ella began, but Chloe was firm.

“Look, I appreciate that you want to do this. I think it’s great that you care. But I remember what happened the last time someone tried to throw a party for me and –”

“Ah, but, no, see, that’s the thing!” Ella said quickly, almost bouncing with excitement. “It definitely won’t be like that again! I won’t ask Maze to help this time, okay? It’ll just be me, and it’ll be _great!_ ”

“Isn’t it a little early to start planning a baby shower?” Chloe asked, closing the file folder in front of her as she surrendered to the reality that Ella wasn’t going to be easily put off with a simple ‘no’ and allow Chloe to get back to work.

“You’re more than halfway there!” Ella pointed out. “You’re in the downhill slide now. You’re 21 weeks now, right?”

“Actually, 22 as of today,” Chloe confessed, and Ella threw her arms up.

“See? Only eighteen weeks to go!”

“ _If_ the baby comes on her due date,” Chloe corrected quickly. “I went past 41 weeks with Trixie.”

“Ah, second babies always come sooner,” Ella said, waving off Chloe’s protests. “Look, I promise you’ll love this baby shower. We can keep it small and super informal, I promise. I just really want to celebrate you and your little girl!”

Chloe groaned, putting her elbows on her desk and burying her face in her hands. Finally, she shook her head helplessly, her elbows swaying beneath her with the motion, and muttered, “Fine. Just…please don’t harass me with questions, okay? I’m going to leave it all up to you.”

“Yay!” Ella squealed. “Comin’ in!” 

Chloe looked up just in time to be enveloped in Ella’s joyous hug. Chloe gave a weak laugh before finally extricating herself from the other woman’s embrace.

“All right, now can I _please_ get back to these?” Chloe asked, gesturing at the files piled up on her desk.

“What are you working on?” Ella asked, perching a hip on the edge of Chloe’s desk. 

“The mother murders,” Chloe said, using the nickname the precinct had started using over the last few months. “There’s got to be something we’re missing, something these women have in common. But I’ve cross-referenced everything. No common hospital, no common ob/gyn, no friends in common…there’s got to be something, but I’m just not finding it.”

Ella grimaced sympathetically. The murders now numbered four, and the infants were all gone without a trace. The case was beginning to get mentions on national news, and the precinct was feeling the pressure to solve it. Chloe knew Dan, as lead Detective, was feeling the heat worse than anyone. She hadn’t seen him except at the precinct in a week, and Trixie was beginning to complain that Daddy never spent time with her anymore.

But the case was frustratingly free of clues that would lead the investigation any further. The women were all single mothers. The babies were all under the age of six months. The women all lived in middle-class neighborhoods and were all strangled after a struggle. Only the first victim and the most recent victim had been able to do any damage to their attacker. Ella had found a single drop of blood on the floor next to the most recent victim that did not match her blood type but _did_ match the sample she’d retrieved from under the nails of Andrea Miller. There were no witnesses at any of the murders except perhaps the missing infants.

“I just keep thinking if I read through the files again, I’ll see something I missed the first hundred times I read through them.” Chloe rubbed her face with her palms and shook her head, looking up to meet Ella’s sympathetic expression. 

“I mean, we gotta get a breakthrough eventually, right?” Ella said, rising from the edge of the desk. “I better get back to the lab. I have a baby shower to plan.”

“No party games!” Chloe called, and Ella waved over her shoulder in response without looking back. Chloe stared down at the closed files covering her desk for a minute, contemplating reading through them for the thousandth time, and then shoved her mouse to turn the computer monitor on. She checked the time and then hesitated, thinking. She’d asked Linda if she could borrow some of her books on birth and newborns, and hadn’t had a chance to pick them up. 

Chloe dug her cell phone out and sent a text to Linda, asking if she had any free time for Chloe to drop by and get the books.

* * * * *

“He’s getting so _big_ ,” Chloe said, hefting baby Charlie into her arms. He gazed at her doubtfully, his chubby face blank except for the slight puckering of his eyebrows as his dark eyes swept over her face for several seconds. Finally he settled comfortably against her side, popping his two middle fingers into his mouth to suck happily.

“I know,” Linda said, smiling at the baby, eyes shining with her obvious pride. “And he’s as healthy as a horse. Amenadiel isn’t surprised, says it would be _more_ surprising if a half-celestial baby got a cold, but I keep waiting for him to wake me up with the sniffles one night.”

Chloe stepped further into the living room of Linda and Amenadiel’s home, her shoes clumping softly on the red clay tiles below them. She noted that the couple still had bubble wrap around everything that could pose a threat if someone bumped into it, from the iron railings on the steps down from the front entryway up to and including the rafters in the ceiling. She imagined Linda was waiting for Charlie to sprout wings during the middle of a nap one day and take off like a fighter jet around the house.

“What’s it like, having a half-celestial baby?” Chloe asked, swaying gently from side-to-side and patting Charlie’s back, instincts left over from Trixie’s babyhood kicking in automatically.

“Well,” Linda said thoughtfully, leading Chloe into the living room. She turned to face Chloe, leaning one hip against the side of one of the two couches spaced around the room. “I don’t know. Charlie is the first baby I’ve ever spent much time around. He’s a happy baby, and he’s never been sick. The fussiest he ever gets is when teething is making him miserable, and even then, he usually calms down quickly when I give him a teething toy to chew on.”

“I mean, does he ever do anything…anything _weird?_ ” Chloe asked. “Anything angelic?”

“Oh.” Linda made a face before shrugging her shoulders. “Not that I’ve seen. No wings, no flying around the rafters, no slowing time like Amenadiel.”

The front door opened behind Chloe and she turned, seeing the angel in question coming in.

“Chloe,” he said, smiling in greeting. Charlie immediately popped his fingers out of his mouth and reached both hands out towards Amenadiel, making small, hopeful grunting sounds. Amenadiel’s smile grew and he scooped his son into his arms, nuzzling his nose into the dark curls on the baby’s head, murmuring too softly for Chloe to pick out the words.

“Let me grab the books for you,” Linda said, pushing away from the couch and leaving the room for a moment. 

Amenadiel stepped down into the living room, and Chloe took a breath, building up her courage. She rested her hands against her abdomen, feeling a flutter of movement against her palms from the baby. She’d felt more and more twists and rolls over the last week. Someone was getting active in there, getting bigger and stronger. The knowledge made Chloe step forward towards the archangel in the entryway. 

“Amenadiel, I wanted to ask if you’d try one more time to get into Hell. I realize it’s a long shot, but it was pointed out to me today that this pregnancy is halfway over, and I just…I really want Lucifer to know.”

Amenadiel stared at her for a long moment, his expression unreadable as he searched Chloe’s face, one large hand gently stroking Charlie’s back as the baby cuddled into his father’s shoulder, once more sucking his two middle fingers. 

“I’ve tried at least once every few weeks since you first asked me, Chloe. The Gates are shut.”

“Okay, but are you like, rattling them or anything? Something that might get his attention?”

Amenadiel grimaced faintly. “It is physically painful to touch the Gates of Hell.”

“So, that’s a ‘no,’ then. You just fly down, have a quick look, and come back?” Chloe asked, stepping closer to Amenadiel, her heart in her throat.

“Ah…I mean, not exactly but…speaking in broad terms, yes.”

“Okay, so maybe rattling the Gates would get his attention. Would you at least _try?_ ” Chloe asked, aware that she was verging on begging.

Amenadiel’s eyebrows lowered as he stared at Chloe, and finally he closed his eyes in surrender. “All right. Hold Charlie for a minute.”

“I’ve got him,” Linda said, coming back into the room with a small stack of books in her arms. “Let me put these down on the table and I’ll take him. He looks ready for a nap anyway.”

Amenadiel transferred his son, murmuring something softly into the baby’s ear as Linda gathered him into her arms. Charlie continued to suck his fingers, eyes blinking slowly as he settled comfortably into the new set of arms. Amenadiel’s wings materialized with the sound of a snapping sheet, huge and almost alarming in the mundane setting of a living room, the long flight feathers at the tips of the wings brushing against the wall on one side and the back of the couch on the other.

“This may take a few hours, especially if I really try to get his attention,” Amenadiel cautioned, opening the front door as he looked back towards Chloe.

“Okay, that’s fine. I need to pick Trixie up from school pretty soon, and I’ll probably be at home after that,” Chloe said. Amenadiel nodded once and then he was gone, disappearing between one blink and the next in the sound of flapping wings.

* * * * *

Someone was testing the Gates. It had been months since a demon had dared try, and Lucifer felt an angry smile twist his face as he turned his attention from the demons cowering in front of him, prostrating themselves as they swore allegiance to him. Dromos was no longer trying to conceal his efforts to go against the Lord of Hell, gathering more and more demons to his cause. Lucifer knew it was only a matter of time before they moved against him, and he found he was rather looking forward to it.

At the moment, though, he had something else to focus on. He raised a hand, stopping the lead demon in the cowering group in mid-word.

“I’ll come back to listen to you grovel in a moment. Something else needs my attention just now,” Lucifer said. In an instant, he stood before the Gates of Hell, his human guise burning away in a rush of fury as he scanned the Gates, looking for the demons trying to break free. But there was no one there, and Lucifer’s furious smile slowly melted into a small moue of confusion.

That was when he saw the angel beating against the Gates from the outside, like a bird beating against a windowpane. 

“Who…?” Lucifer began, and then waved a hand, the massive Gates blowing open with a horrendous screeching sound. In an instant, Amenadiel flew into Hell and landed in front of Lucifer, his wings dropping a few dejected feathers into the ashes underfoot, casualties of Amenadiel’s assault on the Gates.

“To what do I owe this pleasure, brother?” Lucifer asked, his demonic guise giving way in bits and pieces to his angelic appearance. Amenadiel pulled his wings back into immateriality, rolling his shoulders a few times as if stretching out overtaxed muscles.

“I’m here at Chloe’s request,” Amenadiel began, and Lucifer’s face went dark and angry.

“Ah, yes, and how is our dear Detective?” he asked, his words biting. “ _Growing_ as a person, I hope?”

“Lucifer, what…why are you so angry?” Amenadiel looked lost, as if the conversation had taken a turn he had not anticipated, and an angry smile stretched Lucifer’s mouth into a near-grimace.

“I’m not angry; I’m curious about how things have changed since I’ve been gone. It’s been nearly six months, hmm? Surely there’ve been some _developments._ ”

“Of course,” Amenadiel agreed. “But that is Earth, brother. Everything is constantly changing. I sometimes feel as if every morning, Charlie wakes up and is a completely new baby –”

“That’s not what I’m talking about,” Lucifer snapped, waving Amenadiel’s words away with one hand, the movement almost a chop to the air. “I’m talking about the Detective.”

Amenadiel looked troubled, and Lucifer felt something in his gut twist as he realized that this was going to be the moment. Amenadiel was going to tell him about her new lover, and Lucifer was going to have to face up yet again to how utterly replaceable he truly was.

“Yes, we do need to discuss Chloe. She’s the one who asked me to speak with you. Brother, there’s something important you need to know.”

“I already know,” Lucifer snapped, turning his back to Amenadiel to look back over the far reaches of Hell, grey and dismal and unchanging before him. “So, no need to stay any longer. Give my congratulations to the Detective and to whatever new paramour has taken her bed. Unless, of course, she’s returned to Detective Douche, in which case, please tell him he can –”

“Lucifer, wait. You already know? How?” Amenadiel moved with quick steps around Lucifer, standing once more right in front of him, and Lucifer could feel something boiling up in him, a dark desire to destroy something or someone, to wreak havoc until he was too tired to lift his arms or stretch his wings or even take one more step. He _needed_ to end this conversation before he took his fury out on Amenadiel.

“I gave in to temptation. It’s what I do, after all, isn’t it? I took one quick trip to Earth and noticed that the Detective is detecting for two now.” Lucifer’s smile was devoid of joy, a grimace that exposed entirely too many teeth to Amenadiel. “So, now that we’ve discussed it, I invite you to get out of Hell and never come back.”

“Lucifer, I can see that you’re angry,” Amenadiel said, reaching out to catch Lucifer’s sleeve as the other angel began to turn away, his fingertips holding the material in an unbreakable grip. “When Linda initially tried to push me out of her pregnancy with Charlie, I felt many emotions, and anger was one of them. It isn’t a comfortable place to be, desiring to be close to the woman you love and the baby you created together and to know that you can’t be. Please, don’t give in to that anger, brother.”

“You have no idea what I’m feeling,” Lucifer snarled, feeling his wings snap into the material world behind him, stretched wide and threatening, the feathers shockingly white against the dimness of Hell’s landscape. He was close to losing control, using his wings as a weapon against his brother. “You had the comfort of knowing that the woman you loved carried your child, as unlikely as it seemed at the time.”

“And you have that same comfort,” Amenadiel said, his voice soft. “Luci, do _you_ not realize that you are the father of Chloe’s child?”

Oh.

_Oh._

Lucifer’s breath huffed out of him in a sharp exhale. His legs went suddenly weak and he fell to one knee, barely catching a palm against the ash to prevent his face slamming into the rocky ground below. His wings spread to either side of him, covering him in a cocoon of feathers and affording him a small amount of privacy as he absorbed the news. He felt like he was struggling to breathe, his heart beating much too fast, his face oddly tingling, everything distant and unreal. His thoughts kept repeating the phrase “you are the father of Chloe’s child” until the words no longer made any sense.

Amenadiel stepped closer, crouching down in front of Lucifer and hooking an arm underneath his, lifting him up to his feet once more. Amenadiel held him steady with one arm underneath his brother’s and the other wrapped around Lucifer’s back supportively until Lucifer pulled away, standing on his own. 

Amenadiel spoke softly, his voice incredibly gentle. “Lucifer? You didn’t know?”

“It…I…this isn’t possible,” Lucifer whispered through lips gone strangely numb. “You…you were mortal at the time…when Charlie…Charlie was…but I…I wasn’t. I haven’t ever been. I was still an angel. I was still the _Devil_. I can’t…can’t be…couldn’t have…are you sure?”

“She’s certainly sure,” Amenadiel said, and Lucifer shut his eyes, emotions battling for supremacy inside of him. Disbelief, confusion, fear…joy? 

“…mine?” Lucifer whispered, opening his eyes to meet his brother’s frank gaze, and Amenadiel’s expression softened into a smile.

“Yes. Yours and Chloe’s.”

“But celestials can’t have children with humans,” Lucifer protested, eyes dropping to his shoes as he struggled to find a way to make Amenadiel’s words untrue.

“Yes, those were the rules Father laid out after the Deluge. But, Lucifer, these circumstances are not without precedence.”

“The Nephilim, I know,” Lucifer said. “But you know dear old Dad changed the rules long ago.”

“I thought your entire reason for being was to break rules?”

There was a long pause and, finally, Lucifer looked up at Amenadiel, a slow smile spreading across his face.


	8. Chapter 8

Chloe had just settled Trixie at the apartment and was mulling over the contents of the fridge in the hopes that dinner would leap out, fully-formed, if she just looked long enough when she heard the front door banging open and Maze shouting, “Decker?”

Chloe shut the fridge and headed around the kitchen counter towards the open front door as Trixie came squealing from her bedroom to tackle Maze in an enthusiastic hug. The demon gave a pleased smile as she lifted Trixie off of her feet, squeezing the child just as enthusiastically. 

“Welcome back,” Chloe said, leaning against a wall in the front entryway. “Did you get your guy?”

“You bet I did,” Maze said, flashing a sharp grin at Chloe. “And now I’m starving. Does pizza sound good?”

“Pizza!” Trixie squealed in ecstasy before throwing a pleading look back at Chloe.

“Mmm. Actually, pizza does sound pretty good,” Chloe admitted.

“The baby likes pizza,” Trixie confessed in an aside to Maze, and the demon’s smile widened.

“Oh, she does, huh? Girl after my own heart, then,” Maze said.

“Okay, just let me grab my purse and we’ll go,” Chloe said, turning back to the kitchen.

The living room behind her was filled suddenly with the flapping of enormous wings, wind blasting through the apartment, and Amenadiel appeared with Lucifer at his side. He looked ruffled, his hair not slicked perfectly in place and dark smudges on one knee and marring the palm of one hand, like he’d fallen into some kind of thick, clinging dust. His face was tight with some emotion that Chloe couldn’t name, his eyes scanning the area frantically until they landed upon her and locked on her belly.

Chloe could feel the blood draining from her head and she reached out blindly, grabbing the edge of the kitchen counter in a death grip. He was _here_.

“Lucifer!” Trixie shrieked in delight, letting go of Maze to race across the room. Maze managed to grab her before she’d gone more than a step, a faint smile pulling at her lips as she looked upon her sovereign. 

“Hey, little human,” Maze said, her voice persuasive. “Let’s go pick up some pizza to bring back, okay?”

“But I wanted to see Lucifer,” Trixie protested as Maze led her towards the door.

“Yeah, but he’ll be here when we get back. Let’s let your mom talk to him for a minute.”

‘Talk.’ Hah. Chloe was still trying to manage to stay upright as she stared at Lucifer, drinking him in. He was _here_. He was in her living room, looking the same as he’d always looked – other than the huge white wings, but he was even now drawing those in and making them vanish somehow. Chloe drew what felt like the first full breath she’d been able to take in since she’d woken up alone in Lucifer’s bed. She could finally _breathe_.

“I have to get back to Linda and Charlie,” Amenadiel said softly, reaching out to touch Lucifer’s shoulder. He gave a nod to Chloe, and then he was gone, leaving her alone with Lucifer. 

With _Lucifer_ , for the first time in almost six months.

“Lucifer.” The word was a trembling exhalation. 

“Hello, Detective,” he said, his own voice shaking a little as he gestured towards her with a single elegant hand. “You…you’ve changed.”

Chloe gave a wet laugh, a tear slipping free and sliding down her cheek as she stared at him, taking in his familiar, beautiful countenance almost gratefully. 

“You haven’t,” she finally whispered, and he stepped towards her in a few long steps, his arms going around her and pulling her to him, drawing her gently into a kiss that trembled with too many emotions for Chloe to even begin to name them. She brought her own arms up, fingers brushing through his dark hair almost reverently, further mussing it. 

He broke the kiss and pressed his forehead to hers, eyes shut as he breathed much too quickly, almost panting. Chloe slid her hands down the back of his neck and onto his shoulders, stopping one she felt the slick material of his suit, grabbing double handfuls of the cloth and squeezing as if to prevent him from leaving again.

“I thought you were gone forever,” she finally managed to say, the words broken and weak.

“I was. I was,” Lucifer agreed, his own voice so soft. “I _have_ to be. But Amenadiel told me that you…that we…”

He broke off, and Chloe stepped away from him a single step, leaning back a little to make the soft curve of her belly stand out even more. Lucifer stared down, giving a little huffing breath of disbelief as he took in the reality of her pregnancy. He reached a hand down towards her belly and then pulled it back. 

“May I…would it be safe…?”

Chloe reached out, taking his hand in hers and leading it gently to her belly, moving her hand gently behind his as she pressed his warm palm into her belly where she’d most recently felt the baby moving. Lucifer stared down at his hand against the swell of her abdomen with an unreadable expression. Chloe felt the baby give a sudden kick or punch against the pressure from outside of her little womb world, and Lucifer gave a small gasp, his eyes jerking up to Chloe’s face.

“Did…did it…?”

“She’s saying ‘hello,’” Chloe said softly, and Lucifer’s eyes widened even more.

“She? It’s…she’s a girl?” His hand moved gently against Chloe’s belly, caressing both her and the tiny person within with a single motion.

“Yep, absolutely for sure a girl. She was not shy at all about showing us on the ultrasound. I guess she takes after you.”

Lucifer gave a quick laugh and then sobered, his dark brows drawing down as he raised his other hand to cup Chloe’s face, meeting her eyes with rising pain in his own. Chloe felt panic flutter in her chest and reached up to press her fingertips to his mouth.

“Don’t,” she said quickly. “Please, don’t.”

He gently moved her hand down, his long fingers wrapping gently but implacably around her wrist as he drew her fingertips away from his lips.

“I can’t stay,” he said, and Chloe began shaking her head in denial as soon as the words passed his lips, tears gathering in her eyes and making her voice wobble.

“Please, you can’t go again, Lucifer. I’ve missed you so much.”

“I know. It’s been…well, it’s been literal Hell since I left,” Lucifer said, giving a humorless chuckle. “But things in Hell are by no means settled, Detective. I’m still needed there.”

“But I need you here,” Chloe said, aware of how close she was coming to begging. She didn’t care. She would beg if she needed to. “ _We_ need you.”

Lucifer’s eyes ticked down to Chloe’s abdomen and his face twisted in pain, his hand stroking against the side of her belly where it still rested tenderly. 

“Detective…Chloe. If I stay, and the demons decide to wander from Hell again, it would endanger everyone. _Everyone_.” And his fingers pressed a little harder against the swell of her belly, letting her know exactly how much was at stake.

Chloe felt the tears brimming in her eyes and looked up, meeting Lucifer’s stricken gaze even as a tear made its wet way down the curve of her cheek. She fought against the desire to scream “I don’t care” because she knew she _did_ care. She’d chosen to carry this baby and had taken responsibility for her. She had chosen to learn to live without Lucifer because she knew he _did_ have to be in Hell. 

Knowing didn’t make any of it easier.

“Stay for pizza?” she said, her voice small. 

“Careful, Detective,” Lucifer said with a sad smile. “You know what happened the last time you asked me to stay awhile.”

Chloe’s smile was just beginning to form when he leaned down and his mouth was on hers.

His first kiss had been achingly gentle, but this one was full of bald need. It had been almost six months since they’d been together, but the heat of his mouth on Chloe’s pulled the same desperate need from her now that it had months before. She wrapped her arms around him, pulling him as tightly as the bulge of her belly would allow, their kisses growing more frantic as their hands traveled, touched, gripped, stroked. Their breaths were coming in sharp gasps, Chloe’s hands searching beneath Lucifer’s suit jacket to stroke against the smooth cotton of his white shirt, feeling the planes and muscles of his back shifting beneath the material as his own hands slid down her back to grip her – 

“We’re back!”

Trixie’s chirping voice hit them as effectively as a bucket of ice water and they broke away from each other, breathing hard and looking guilty. 

“Maybe I should’ve taken a couple extra minutes picking up the pizzas?” Maze sounded amused as she stepped in behind Trixie, eyeing Chloe and Lucifer with a knowing look as she hefted a couple of large pizza boxes in her arms.

“Not at all,” Lucifer said smoothly, reaching up to run his long fingers through his mussed hair, trying futilely to put it back to rights after Chloe’s fingers had so thoroughly disarrayed it. He stepped around the couch to stand with the recliner just in front of him, hiding any obvious evidence leftover from their recent make-out session. “I haven’t had bad chain pizza in months. It’ll be an experience!”

“So, you’re really gonna eat with us?” Trixie asked, her smile showing off a mouthful of slightly gappy, slightly too-big teeth.

“Yes, small human, I really am,” he agreed. Chloe stepped up beside him, sliding her fingers into his hand as she reached him, and there was only the briefest hesitation before he wound his fingers through hers and held tightly.

Dinner was almost idyllic. They stuck to bland topics: Chloe’s changes at work, Maze’s most recent bounties, Trixie’s increasing insistence that her math teacher might actually not be human because of his obsession with frogs. No one said anything about where Lucifer had been until the dishes were stacked in the sink and the pizza boxes had been broken down to be stuffed into the dumpsters the next day.

“Lucifer?” Trixie’s voice was hesitant, and Chloe turned away from the sink where she’d been drying her hands after getting the last of the dishes put away to see her daughter standing uncomfortably by the end of the kitchen counter, half hidden behind it. Lucifer stood just past Chloe in the kitchen, seemingly content to watch her do something as mundane as hand-washing the few dishes from their pizza dinner.

“Yes?” he replied, raising his eyebrows slightly in question.

“Are you going to stay now? I mean, now that you know about the baby…” Trixie trailed off, slinking behind the counter even further until only one eye peeked out at them.

“Ah,” Lucifer said, stuffing his hands uncomfortably into his trouser pockets. Chloe quickly stepped forward, crouching to be eye-level with her daughter.

“Hey, Monkey, you know that Lucifer has important things that he has to do in his own life, right?”

“I know,” Trixie said, sounding miserable. Like most children, she had the unerring ability to hear a ‘no’ before the word was even spoken. “I just hoped that now that he knows…”

“Sometimes, we can’t do things even when we really, really want to,” Chloe said gently, reaching out to take her daughter’s hands to pull her out from behind the counter so Chloe could more readily meet her eyes. “And Lucifer really, _really_ wants to be here for us, but he can’t stay. He has…responsibilities. Things that he…he left behind when he came to check on me. And now he has to get back to them.”

“Will he come back again, though?” Trixie asked, and Chloe felt her throat close up as she fought back her own emotions at the realization that he probably would not be coming back. She had managed to squeeze out one beautiful evening, but it was more than she could ever have expected. To ask for more now would be too much.

“I will,” Lucifer said from behind them, his voice decisive, and Chloe turned in surprise, still crouched and holding Trixie’s hands. She tipped her head back to look up at him, seeing from the set of his jaw that he was not just saying it to comfort her daughter. He _meant_ it. “I’ll find a way to drop in now and again.”

“But, Lucifer –” Chloe protested, and he cut her off with a quick smile and a shake of his head.

“I will find a way,” he repeated, enunciating each word slowly and clearly.

From across the kitchen, Chloe’s phone chirruped with an incoming call. She hefted herself awkwardly back to her feet, wondering how she was going to manage another three or four months of growth if it was already getting this difficult to get up and down, and hurried to unplug her phone from where it had been charging. When she saw who was calling, her pulse kicked into high gear.

“Dan? What is it?” she asked, dreading the answer.

“There’s another body, a mom with a missing infant,” Dan said, and Chloe fought the urge to swear. “But, Chloe, it’s a fresh body. Her sister stopped by her house an hour ago to drop some things off for the baby and found the body. She called the police. We know the vic had to have been killed between picking the baby up from daycare at 5:30 and her sister arriving at 8. And the neighbors across the street, Chloe? They have security cameras.”

“What?” Chloe breathed, hope bubbling up in her as she clutched the edge of the kitchen counter with one hand, the other squeezing the phone so hard it made her fingers ache.

“We might have a shot of the murderer’s vehicle. Chloe, we might finally have a break in this case!”

* * * * *

An hour later, Trixie was tucked in and Maze had settled on the couch with a couple of six packs of craft beer and a slasher movie. Chloe was sitting on the foot of her bed, finishing a quick rundown of the ongoing case while Lucifer listened with a doubtful expression.

“But why would anyone want to steal infants? They’re horrible creatures, always screaming and messing themselves.” 

Chloe gave a disbelieving huff and, at her look, he quickly smiled and said, in a soothing tone, “Although I’m sure yours will be different.”

Chloe sighed, rising slowly from the edge of the bed. “No, that’s pretty much how all babies are, Lucifer. But you reminded me of something I wanted to clear up with you: I don’t expect you to be Dad of the Year, okay?”

Lucifer’s face went blank. After a brief pause, he asked, softly, “And what, exactly, does _that_ mean?”

“Babies, kids…they aren’t your thing. I know that. I understand it, even.” Chloe rested both hands on the swell of her abdomen. “This was an accident; neither of us planned this. It was my choice to continue the pregnancy, and my choice to be a mom for the second time. I’m not asking you to help with the day-to-day duties of raising the baby.”

“Normally, I would agree whole-heartedly, but I find that I’m feeling a bit…pushed out.” Lucifer sounded both annoyed and frustrated at the same time. “I have no desire to deal with nappies and bottles, but at the same time, I feel quite proprietary about your – our – the baby.”

“ _Our_ baby,” Chloe said, stepping close to him and putting a hand gently on his suit sleeve. “Lucifer, I know we didn’t mean to do this, but she’s as much yours as she is mine. She’s your daughter, Lucifer.”

He stared at her silently, his dark eyes wide and unsure. The faint puckering of his brows was the only indication Chloe had that he wasn’t completely comfortable, and she moved in to wrap her arms around him, resting her head against the plane of his shoulder as she whispered, “Hey. It’s going to be fine, okay? I’m not going to ask anything of you. I don’t expect anything from you. But I want you to know that I fully support any fatherly gestures you want to bestow on her.”

“Well, given the limited experience I have with father figures, you may want to rescind that offer,” Lucifer murmured in her ear. “Else you might find her cast into another dimension for displeasing me.”

Chloe gave a short laugh before pulling back and giving Lucifer a hard look. “Let’s leave discipline to me, okay?”

“Probably for the best,” he agreed with a tiny shake of his head.

Chloe stepped back, tugging uncomfortably at the hem of her shirt for a second before blurting out, “When do you plan to leave?”

“Soon,” he said, voice going soft again, his eyes flicking from her face to the bed to the floor, almost as if he couldn’t stand to hold her gaze. “I thought I might…stay for a little longer. Perhaps join you in bed for a moment?”

Chloe hesitated. Lucifer was…asking? No, not just asking. He sounded unsure of his welcome. It was completely out of character for the teasing, confident man she had gotten used to. Had she given any sign that she wouldn’t welcome him back with open arms? 

“Hey, Lucifer, look at me.” There was a pause before he slowly raised his eyes, keeping his face canted downwards slightly. “I know it’s been six months since I told you, but…I still love you. Nothing has changed for me.”

His shoulders dropped and some of the tension went out of his face as he took a slow, deep breath. “So, I wasn’t just a single fantastic night of sex?”

“God, I hope not,” she said on a bark of laughter, and Lucifer grimaced slightly.

“Let’s not go bringing Him into this, please.”

“Right, sorry. Ahem.” Chloe rubbed at her belly a bit to ease a tight muscle, and then gestured with both hands at the bump. “What about…uh…have you ever had sex with someone who was – was –”

“Double the fun?” Lucifer suggested, and pressed his lips together in a brief moue of distaste. “Not one of my particular kinks, I’m afraid, although I have partaken a few times. Of course, never with someone carrying _my_ child. Congratulations, Detective; you’ll be introducing me to a sexual first.”

“I feel like I should be getting a medal or something,” Chloe joked, dropping to sit on the edge of the bed, sliding her fingertips back and forth on the comforter in a nervous motion. 

“I will happily provide one,” Lucifer promised in a low, sultry tone, stepping closer to her, his expression changing subtly as he took her in. “I must say, pregnancy agrees with you. I’ve heard of pregnant women ‘glowing,’ but you look absolutely beautiful. Even more so than the last time I saw you.”

He lowered his knees to the mattress on either side of her hips, raising his hands to cup her face and tip her chin up towards him as he bent down to kiss her, and Chloe stopped worrying about anything except touching him.

Chloe had felt increasingly big and awkward as her pregnancy progressed, but Lucifer made her feel graceful. He anticipated her movements and changes of positions and he supported and helped her. She didn’t lumber once the entire time they were together in her bed, and when she finally curled on her side, covered in sweat and utterly relaxed, Lucifer was beside her, one arm draped over her waist, his warm fingers splayed against the swell of her belly as she fell asleep.

When she got up in the darkest hours just before dawn to empty her bladder after a sudden kick from the baby directly into the overfull organ woke her, Lucifer was gone. This time, though, she knew he would be back. He had told her so, and he did not lie to her.

It wasn’t until she rolled out of bed that she noticed he had left a small gold-colored medal on a ribbon on top of her bedside safe on that side of the bed. Engraved on it were the words

Detective Chloe Decker  
for  
A Sexual First

She was still laughing when she made it to the bathroom several minutes later. 


	9. Chapter 9

Chloe went directly to Dan’s desk when she arrived at the precinct the next morning. He was on the phone and held up a single finger, asking her for patience, but she couldn’t stop herself from shifting impatiently from foot to foot, her fingers tapping rapidly on her thighs, as she waited for him to finish his call.

“Well?” she asked, as soon as he hung up.

“The company that stores the security cam footage got back to us at 8am. We have unis combing through the footage between 5:30pm when Adrianna Martinez got home with seven-week-old José Martinez and 8pm when her sister arrived. The cameras don’t have a direct line-of-sight to the vic’s home, but part of the street is visible. If we can get a good shot of any vehicles on the street between 5:30 and 8pm, we might be able to start narrowing this down.”

“Okay, so you’re telling me we might get a few seconds of blurry footage of a random vehicle? Dan, how is this a lead? Are you going to have the unis cross-checking every owner of Dodge Durangos in LA on the off-chance that one of them knew one or more of the victims?” Chloe couldn’t help feeling defeated. Dan had sounded so sure when he had called her the night before.

“No,” he said, not bothered at all by her defeatist attitude. “There’s more. Maya, Adrianna’s sister, said that Adrianna was taking a prenatal yoga class until she had José a week ago. Adrianna apparently talked about it all the time, and about the women she had met through the class. Chloe, she recognized one of the other victim’s names.”

“Oh my God,” Chloe whispered, bracing a hand on the back of Dan’s chair. “Who?”

“Victim number three, Lindsay Cramer. They shared a class until Lindsay gave birth and apparently Lindsay and Adrianna had gotten friendly and even gone for coffee a few times outside of class. If Lindsay and Adrianna had this class in common –”

“Then maybe some of the other victims were in it as well,” Chloe finished. “I can start pulling financial records on the other victims, see if there are any charges from the yoga studio. What was it called?”

Dan flipped open a file on his desk and dug through for a minute before pulling out a wrinkled sheet of bright pink paper and offering it to Chloe.

“Mama Rising Yoga at Chakra Studios,” Chloe read, raising her eyebrows as she scanned down the piece of paper detailing class times and days along with the benefits of yoga for pregnant bodies and the babies growing within. “Huh. If I didn’t think this studio was a front for a murder and kidnapping business, I’d consider signing up for one of these classes.”

“That’s the thing: the owner and instructor at the studio, Lisa Bradshaw, has nothing in her record that would indicate she might be murdering her students and stealing their babies. She checks out completely clean. Except,” Dan paused, opening a new window on his browser and tapping a few keys before leaning back in his chair and gesturing towards the screen.

Chloe leaned closer, bracing her hands on the desk as she read the screen. “Private adoptions? But what does this have to do…”

“Ah ah ah,” Dan said, scrolling to the bottom of the page and clicking a link. “Look who’s listed as the owner/operator of the private adoption agency.”

“Connor Bradshaw. Wait, Bradshaw, as in –”

“Husband to Lisa Bradshaw, who runs the yoga studio.”

“This could be it,” Chloe breathed, standing up straight and bracing a hand against her lower back where a muscle was twinging after she’d been bent over. “I want to be there when you question them.”

“I’m still waiting on a warrant to get blood samples from both Lisa and Connor to see if either of them is a match for the samples we got from the Andrea Miller and Lindsay Cramer scenes. The judge wants more proof before she issues it, though.”

“Detective?” Chloe and Dan both looked up at the uniformed officer standing near Dan’s desk, holding a pad of yellow legal paper in his hands. “I finished watching that footage you asked me to look through. Uh, only three vehicles went past the camera between 5:30 and 8pm. The video was black and white, so I can’t tell you any colors. But a dark SUV went by at 5:45. It was going the wrong way for us to see a plate, but it looked like maybe it had like, some fuzzy dice on the review mirror. Something was hanging there, anyway. It also had a crack running across the front windshield. A light-colored minivan went by at 6:24pm, with its windows down and multiple children visible inside the vehicle. The last vehicle caught on camera was a Jeep that went by at 7:05pm and I was able to get a partial plate: 6HU. It also had a vanity cover on the spare: ‘Namaste.’”

“Have you run the partial yet?” Dan asked, reaching out to take the offered piece of paper the uniformed officer tore off the legal pad he was holding.

“Yes, sir,” the officer replied. “There is only one Jeep in Los Angeles with a plate starting with 6HU, registered to Lisa K. Bradshaw.”

“I’m calling the judge,” Dan breathed, turning back to his desk.

* * * * *

Lucifer was not accustomed to being made to _wait_. He had sought out Dromos almost as soon as he had returned to Hell, ready to be done with the foolishness of the demons, but had been hampered in his efforts when he arrived at where Dromos _should_ have been and instead found a sea of obstinate demons standing in the way.

He began pushing his way through them firmly but gently, parting them like a demonic Red Sea – or, rather, a red-and-green-and-pus-yellow-and-shining-carapace-black sea. It was working until he was well into the gathering of demons, and then they began to push back.

 _‘This is inconvenient,’_ Lucifer thought with a frustrated snort of air, feeling the slickness of a gelatinous body sliming its way across the back of one hand while icy-cold scales scraped his fingertips on the other hand.

Lucifer was strong. An archangel in a seemingly endless sea of demons, though, could conceivably be held down under a crush of bodies willing to throw themselves on the landmine that was their King. He realized rather quickly as he felt claws beginning to rake at him, even though they could not grievously injure him, that he was at risk of being put in a position where he would have to destroy a great many of his subjects if he wanted to get through, especially if they began piling one upon another in a doomed attempt to stop his forward progress. A delay in returning to his Detective or a potential mass murder? No. They would not push him to either of those outcomes.

In a flash of fury, his human seeming exploded off of him in flakes of ash that scattered across the bodies of the demons closest to him. His wings flashed wide, red and spiny and powerful, sweeping the demons back from him.

“Dromos!” he roared, his voice echoing across all of Hell, and the demons around him fell to their knees in supplication, no longer as brave as they had been moments before. He could see the demon in question a few meters further on, cowering but not nearly as low as his compatriots.

“My King?” Dromos remained crouched, peering up through two huge, goat-pupiled eyes as Lucifer stepped over, around, and on demons as he approached Dromos. As he moved, Lucifer pulled his human visage back around him, wrapping it over his demonic form until only the huge, dragon-like wings remained to remind the demons with whom they were dealing. “You were seeking me?”

“It’s time to put this little rebellion to bed.” Lucifer straightened a cuff in an offhand flick and gave Dromos a joyless smile. The demon blinked his eyes slowly before giving Lucifer a sick smile.

“A rebellion, my King?” 

“Dromos, you do remember that I can see everything that happens in Hell, yes?”

Dromos shifted uncomfortably from one clawed foot to the other, reaching up to scratch at the tentacles covering his head like an undulating ocean plant. “Of course, my King. So, that means you know I haven’t been planning any uprising.”

Lucifer gave a small grunt of annoyance, waving one hand. “Not planning, no, but not putting down the complaints of those who think I’m no longer fit to be King.”

Dromos stood a little taller, smiling. “But it’s not a crime to speak such thoughts, my King. The only crime is outright rebellion. You said so yourself.”

“Then stop speaking those thoughts, Dromos. I’m getting tired of listening to it.” Lucifer drew his wings in tightly, settling them in a tight fold against his back. 

“Haven’t you wondered yourself, Lucifer, about whether or not you should be King?” Dromos’ tone was wheedling and the demon was now standing at his full height, looking down slightly at his King. “You decided to leave Hell, after all. Hell never forced you out, not like the Silver City did. You left your kingship to run to Earth with no plan of ever coming back from your ‘vacation.’ You tried to make _me_ King in your place when I came to retrieve you.”

Dromos took a single step closer, the demons around his clawed feet rustling as they moved out of his path completely _unlike_ the way they’d done for Lucifer.

“Yes, well, I saw the error of my ways and returned,” Lucifer said, forcing a smile to his face. “Here I am, your King, demanding that you stop encouraging or listening to any kind of rebellious talk.”

“You’re right, Lucifer. Of course, it’s definitely time to be done with rebellious talk.” Dromos spread his arms wide, straightening even more, tossing his head back as his mane of tentacles writhed frantically. “Now is the time for rebellious action! _Attack!_ ”

Even with the warning of Dromos’ shout, Lucifer did not have time to brace for the crush of demonic bodies piling onto him. Claws raked at him, horns gouged at him, unspeakable fluids drooled and dribbled onto his flesh, but the worst was the weight of bodies upon bodies flattening him to the ash-covered rock. He couldn’t get his arms or legs underneath him to lever himself off the ash-covered rock. He couldn’t unfurl his powerful wings. He roared his fury, but the sound was drowned under the clamor of demons howling in triumph and, dimly, Dromos’ laughter.

* * * * *

“I’m lead,” Dan muttered as they climbed out of his vehicle down the street from Chakra Studios.

“I know,” Chloe said, maneuvering herself out of the car and then groaning as she realized she’d left her phone tucked inside her purse in the footwell. She grabbed hold of the side of the door as she leaned over, moving carefully so her belly didn’t overbalance her, and retrieved the phone, silently bemoaning the reality of the lack of pockets in her maternity pants. As she straightened up, Dan was watching her with an amused expression, his hands propped on his hips.

“Need me to get you a room service cart to prop that on?” he asked, gesturing with one hand towards her belly. “You could just wheel it ahead of you…”

“Hah hah,” she replied humorlessly. She juggled her phone from one hand to the other as she stepped up on the curb, turning towards Dan as she slid her phone uselessly against her hip where the pockets would have been, had she been wearing normal work trousers instead of maternity pants. Chloe blew out a breath and stuffed the phone into the tiny pocket on one side of her suit jacket, coming around the front of the car to join Dan.

“Having trouble?” Dan asked, grinning at her fumbling.

Chloe gave him an unamused look. “Can we just go in, please?”

They approached the studio in silence, both of them taking in the number of cars parked along either side of the street in front of the studio. They’d had to travel a good way down the block before they had managed to find a car pulling out of a spot. Obviously, Chakra Studios was popular.

There was a class going on across the airy, open dance studio from them as they stepped in. A slim-but-muscled woman with honey-blond hair in a high ponytail dressed in a too-shiny leotard and yoga pants was leading a group of thirty women of varying levels of pregnancy-hugeness through a series of gentle bends and twists. The instructor looked up as they came in and smiled in greeting, making several of the students drop out of the side-lean they’d been in to turn and look at the front door.

“Sorry, this class is full up,” she called, her voice a cheerful chirp. “We do classes by appointment only, and ask that all partners stay at home; Mama Rising is for mamas-to-be-only.”

Chloe glanced down at her round belly and then back up at the pretty instructor. “We’re not here for a class.”

“LAPD,” Dan said, flashing his badge. “We’re looking for Lisa Bradshaw.”

“Oh!” The instructor’s eyes went wide and she looked around the class full of pregnant women who were all watching the interaction with interest. “She’s in the other studio, but that class just finished five minutes ago. She should be available now…just go through those double doors.” She gestured to the wall to the left of the front door where a pair of frosted glass doors separated one classroom from the other.

Dan led the way, and behind them, Chloe could hear the instructor trying to get the class back on track. The next room looked much the same as the first, except there was no door leading to the street outside. A tall woman with a sleek brown bob was dressed in jogging shorts and a tank top and looked to be rolling up yoga mats and stacking them on one another against the far wall when the glass doors shut soundlessly behind them. Nearby, a young man hunched over a sponge mop as he pushed it slowly across the floor not far from the double doors leading into the studio.

“Can I help you?” the woman asked, straightening up and dusting her hands together lightly.

“Lisa Bradshaw?” Dan asked.

“Yes?”

“LAPD,” Dan said, lifting his badge again. “I’m Detective Espinoza, this is Detective Decker. Can you tell us where you were between 5 and 9pm yesterday evening?”

“Cops?” The young man straightened, his eyes going wide. 

“Jon, why don’t you take a break,” Lisa suggested, giving the young man a kind smile. He hesitated, holding on to the mop for another second as he glanced between Lisa and the detectives.

“Will you be okay?” he finally asked, and Lisa nodded. 

“Take a break, Jon. I’ll come find you in a few minutes.”

The young man cast a single, doubtful look at Chloe and Dan before stuffing his sponge mop into a rolling bucket and dragging the whole thing from the room through the frosted glass double doors behind Chloe and Dan.

“To answer your question, I was here,” Lisa said, her thin eyebrows drawing down over her eyes as she moved towards them, her bare feet tapping softly against the shiny wooden floor of the yoga classroom. “Excuse me, but what is this in relation to?”

“One of your students, Adrianna Martinez, was murdered yesterday evening. A vehicle matching yours was seen on Adrianna’s street yesterday evening.”

“No, that’s impossible,” Lisa said, crossing her arms over her tank top. “My Jeep was parked in the alley behind my studio until I left after my last class ended at 8pm.”

“You know that for sure, ma’am?” Dan asked doubtfully. “Does anyone else have a set of keys to your Jeep?”

“My husband does, but he was home all evening with our two-year-old twins.” Lisa frowned. “I called the house between my 6 and 7pm classes to say goodnight to the girls and talked with Connor until my first students began arriving at 6:45.”

Chloe could feel her heart sinking. “Can anyone else verify your husband’s whereabouts?” she asked, and Lisa turned her frown on Chloe.

“No, but he couldn’t leave the girls home alone, and my Jeep has the only carseats for them.”

Dan rubbed his palm across the back of his neck for a second and then dug into his jacket pocket, pulling out the warrant Judge Casters had issued only hours before. “I have a warrant to get a blood sample from you and your husband. I’ll need you both to come to the station today to provide one and answer some more questions.”

Lisa reached out for the warrant and Dan handed it over. She looked over it slowly, obviously reading every word, before thrusting it back at Dan.

“I have classes until 6 tonight. I can ask Marie to take over my 4:00, though; her last class ends at 2, and she’ll have time to get something to eat before the students start arriving for the 4:00.” Lisa crossed her arms over her chest and tapped one bare foot against the wood floor for a moment, muttering under her breath about having to call the babysitter and pay double for short notice. Chloe could sympathize with that particular struggle; it was always more expensive when she had to get the babysitter to watch Trixie on short notice. 

“Excuse me,” Lisa finally said, moving quickly across the room to pick up a cell phone and lift it to her ear, dismissing them. They headed out of the studio without another word.

Dan waited until they were in the privacy of his car before smacking the steering wheel with the flat of one hand. “ _Damnit!_ ”

“Dan, come on, it’s not over yet,” Chloe said, reaching out to touch his hand lightly where it still rested on the steering wheel. “Let’s compare the blood samples before we give up, okay?”

“Yeah, of course,” Dan said, slumping in the driver’s seat. “But, Chloe, I have a bad feeling, okay? I just…I think we’re about to hit another dead end.”

Chloe didn’t want to say it out loud, but she agreed with Dan.


	10. Chapter 10

It had been ten weeks. 

Chloe felt like she’d fallen into some kind of horrible limbo. The mother murders had, indeed, hit another dead end. The blood samples from under Andrea Miller’s nails and the single drop next to Lindsay Cramer’s body had not matched either Lisa or Connor Bradshaw. There were some similarities to Lisa’s but not enough, especially when combined with her airtight alibi. That meant that they could not reasonably make her a suspect. The other employees at the yoga studio, Jon Carlson and Marie Schneider, had no prior records and neither had been at the studio that night. Jon had been with friends and Marie had been at a bar with her girlfriend, celebrating the other woman’s new position at her job. Dead ends all the way around.

They had even tried sweeping Lisa Bradshaw’s Jeep for any evidence that could help them find if it had recently been stolen to be used by the murderer, but there were no samples that could not be matched to the Bradshaws.

The only positive in the case was that the mother murders had stopped after their visit to the yoga studio, which everyone admitted was suspicious as hell. Lisa Bradshaw had provided lists of all the studio’s current and past students going back four months, and the police had done their due diligence of warning all the single mothers in the classes of what to watch for.

Six women in the classes had given birth since Chloe and Dan had visited the studio. Only one, Bian Le, had been a single mother. The police had been doing wellness checks on both her and her new baby for the last three weeks. Until another of the expecting single mothers gave birth, there wasn’t much the LAPD could do.

And Lucifer hadn’t come back.

She knew he hadn’t given her a timeline for his return visits to Earth, but somehow, she hadn’t expected it to be _this_ long. Of course, considering it took him nearly six months to come back the first time, ten weeks was almost nothing…but Chloe’s pregnant belly had doubled in size over the past two-and-a-half months. She could feel time running out as she rapidly approached the end of her pregnancy. She was well into the third trimester now. Her twice-a-night bathroom trips had doubled and she was beginning to really _feel_ the pregnancy: aching hips, swollen feet, increasing heartburn and all.

Chloe felt like she was in some kind of hellish holding pattern. Every day, she went to work and did paperwork. Every evening, she and Trixie would spend time together, sometimes with Maze for company when the demon wasn’t out hunting a bounty and sometimes with Dan when he could pull himself away from work long enough to touch base with his family.

And Lucifer hadn’t come back.

“Decker? I’m heading out!” Maze’s voice was loud, even though she was downstairs. Chloe dropped the shirt she’d been folding and exited her bedroom, heading down to the living room where Maze was waiting.

“Have you got everything?” Chloe asked, glancing over the bags Maze had stacked on the cushion at one end of the sofa.

“Yep.”

“Did you actually pack for Canadian weather this time?” Chloe quirked a brow and Maze laughed. She had obviously learned an important lesson from the first time she’d hunted a bounty in Canada; even though the weather in LA was balmy, Maze had a heavy winter jacket thrown over one shoulder.

“I’ve got it, Decker. I wish Dan didn’t have Trixie right now; kinda wanted to say goodbye.”

Chloe grimaced in sympathy. She didn’t entirely understand the friendship between her young daughter and the ancient demon, but she didn’t see any harm in it and knew the two were incredibly attached to one another. With the slowdown in the mother murders, though, Dan had finally felt like it would be a good time for him to take a few days with Trixie. Truthfully, Chloe had been relieved. She was staring down the gun of the last ten weeks of her pregnancy starting in the next couple of days, and she needed a break.

“You’ll see her when you get back, right? How long are you thinking this is going to take?”

Maze shouldered a couple of heavy-looking bags, flashing a smile with her brilliantly-red lips. “Maybe a few weeks? This guy likes to run and hide, like a little bunny. It should be a lot of fun.”

“Okay, well. Uh, good hunting?” Chloe said, wincing a little and pressing a hand to her side where a tiny foot was kicking with regular little thrusts. She rubbed back against the small body part and felt the baby roll away from her touch, a bizarre and slightly nauseating feeling.

“She kicking you around again?” Maze asked, her smile changing slightly, becoming softer somehow.

“Oh, yeah, you know it,” Chloe said.

“I can appreciate that. My kinda girl.” Maze turned, her boots thumping across the apartment floor as she headed towards the front door. “Catch you in a few weeks, Decker!”

The door slammed shut behind Maze, and Chloe sat a hip on the back on the couch with a sigh. Maze was gone for a few weeks, Dan had Trixie for the next few days, and it was a Friday afternoon. The only perk of desk duty: uninterrupted weekends.

Chloe hefted herself off the edge of the couch to head to the bathroom. She was going to soak in the tub until her hips stopped hurting for a little while.

* * * * *

Lucifer had always been amused by Dante’s Inferno. The idea that Hell would have levels, like an office complex, was laughable.

He wasn’t laughing now.

Crushed under the writhing weight of hundreds of demons, Lucifer was finding there was, indeed, another, much lower level of Hell.

It had been weeks, he guessed, since the assault had begun. It was harder to track human time when he was continuously struggling against a never-ceasing onslaught of demonic bodies. They piled onto him in uncountable numbers, hampering his movement by sheer dint of the mass of them. Every time he would struggle his way up an inch or two, a roar would go up from the demons and the weight on him would increase, presumably from a new layer of demonic bodies piling on top of the mound.

Demons didn’t need human things like sleep or food. This realm was unlike Earth in every way, save one: gravity still held him down, and it was currently his enemy since it assisted those trying to stop him.  
Lucifer knew he could end this struggle at any time. All he had to go was destroy a huge proportion of the beings native to this realm. He had not quite reached the point where the utter ending of hundreds of living beings seemed a just use of his power…but the longer he fought beneath the weight of his subjects, the more the idea appealed to him.

He couldn’t remember exactly how long a human gestated for, but his Detective had looked lush with their child when he’d been with her, larger even than when he’d gotten a glimpse of her some weeks before that. How much time had been wasted under this mountain of squirming, clawing, snarling demonic flesh? And how much more time could he afford to waste?

Lucifer managed to snake his arm through the dark mass of demonic bodies around him and grabbed hold of a hugely muscled forearm, his fingers tangling tightly in the thick fur that covered it, using it to drag himself upwards a few more inches, putting him face-to-face with a demon that seemed to be composed entirely of jelly. Its face kept sliding down and melting apart only to reform higher up on its body.

Its mouth opened, a dark, sucking hole preparing to roar out a warning that the King was rising again, but Lucifer released his hold on the furred arm he’d been gripping and drove his fist into the demon’s mouth, the force of his strike causing a gelid explosion of goo that spattered him and all the demons nearest him in dripping matter. A surge of elation rose up in Lucifer at the destruction of this single enemy, but it was short-lived. The jellied demon couldn’t voice a warning until it managed to pull itself back together, but a double dozen others had seen his progress and they howled out for more support.

The weight upon him increased anew, and Lucifer shouted in furious, helpless frustration as his arms were pressed down into uselessness once more.

* * * * *

Chloe’s skin felt wonderfully warm and glowing after the hot soak. She was dressed and giving her still-damp hair one last squeeze with the towel when the phone began to chime from downstairs.

“Crap crap crap,” she chanted, making her way downstairs as quickly as she could with her 30-week belly hiding her feet. Her phone had stopped making noise by the time she reached it, and she lifted it to see whose call she’d missed. She barely had time to register Dan’s name before a text came in.

_Another attack on a mother. Bringing Trixie back. See you in ten._

Chloe’s heart sank. There had been only one single mother in the yoga classes who’d given birth in the last two months, and the police had been keeping an eye on her. Unless one of the other women in the class had given birth and Chloe had missed hearing about it, this meant that three-week-old ThuyLinh Le was missing and her mother, Bian Le, was dead.

Chloe sank slowly to the kitchen floor, her back pressed against the cabinets, her legs bent at the knee and bookending her belly. She pressed her elbows into her knees and buried her face into her hands. 

The eight-week break between the fifth murder and the sixth may have just been a coincidence. There had been a month break between the murders before; maybe the killer had a particular reason for taking the babies he was taking, and none of the women who’d given birth in the intervening months between Adrianna Martinez and Bian Le had birthed babies who met whatever strange criteria the kidnapper was looking for.

When the front door opened a little while later, Chloe tried to heave herself back up off the floor and found that her legs had gone to sleep while she was having her little pity party on the kitchen floor.

“Chloe?” Dan sounded annoyed rather than concerned, a testament to how much these murders were getting to him.

“Kitchen,” she called back. “I could use a hand up, if you have a second.”

Trixie appeared around the counter first, a confused grin on her face. “Mommy? What are you doing on the floor?”

“Uh. I just sat down for a minute and my legs went to sleep. Now I’m stuck. Think Daddy can get me back up?”

Trixie glanced at Chloe’s belly doubtfully before throwing a look over her shoulder towards Dan, who Chloe could hear approaching.

“I dunno, Mommy. You’re _really_ big.”

“Thanks,” Chloe said drily. 

Dan huffed out a breath that was almost a laugh when he caught sight of Chloe. “Didn’t this happen when you were pregnant with Trixie, too?”

“Yeah, once. I learned my lesson after that,” Chloe said, holding her hands up towards Dan imploringly. He gripped her fingers tightly, leaning back to give himself a little more leverage.

“Did you forget that lesson?” he groaned as he hauled and Chloe tried to get her numb legs to cooperate in getting her vertical again. She didn’t bother responding to his jibe.

Once she was on her feet again, she leaned her forearms on the counter, doing a weird little tap dance as her legs began to wake up with surges of pins and needles.

“I thought there was a uni doing wellness checks on Bian Le?” she asked as she wiggled one foot to try and ease the prickling in it.

“Yeah. Three times a day.”

“Random times?” Chloe asked, pushing off the counter to stand upright.

Dan made a frustrated noise as his face twisted. “That was the instruction, but he started showing up at pre-planned times after the first week. Apparently, Ms. Le asked if he could time his wellness checks around the nap schedule she was trying to implement.”

Chloe grimaced. “Like that works on a three-week-old anyway.”

Dan huffed out a laugh, rubbing a hand over the top of his head and ruffling his hair. “Yeah, no kidding. Now she’s in the hospital and her daughter is missing.”

Chloe’s heart kicked into high gear. “Wait. She’s not dead?”

“She fought like hell. From what the uni said, the entire house is destroyed, but she was able to fight her attacker long enough that the uni was coming by for his wellness check and her attacker must have been aware of time running out. He didn’t finish the job, although she had to go into emergency surgery for her crushed trachea, and both of her hands have multiple broken fingers along with one shattered forearm.”

“I want to be there to question her when she comes out of surgery,” Chloe said, reaching for her purse.

“Whoa, slow down,” Dan said, putting a hand over hers. “Her trachea was crushed, Chlo. Doctors are saying it’s going to take two weeks, minimum, before she can talk.”

“Well, what about writing? Maybe she can give us a basic description,” Chloe pushed.

Dan raised his hands in a resigned shrug. “Broken fingers.”

“Goddamnit, Dan, she _saw_ who we’re looking for. If we can get even a partial description out there –”

“The uni is already working with a sketch artist, Chloe. He only got a glimpse of the guy coming out the front door, carrying the baby. He was just pulling up and recognized the baby blanket as one Ms. Le used all the time. He checked Ms. Le before trying to pursue, and the suspect had already gotten away.”

Chloe felt a smile pulling at the corners of her mouth. “So…we have a description?”

“Not a great one. He only got a quick glimpse as he was pulling up to the curb in front of the house. But it’s more than we had a week ago.”

* * * * *

“Are you kidding me?” Chloe slapped the paper down onto her desk before rubbing her hands over her face in frustration. “This looks like Generic White Guy #1. How the hell is a uni so bad at giving a description?”

Dan sighed, shifting from foot to foot before he finally threw his hands up. “He did the best he could, okay? He did say he only got a quick glimpse of the guy as he pulled up. By the time the uni was getting out of his car, the guy had already turned his back and moved so he was walking behind the cars in the neighbor’s driveway.”

“But, Dan, this is useless!” Chloe gestured down at the police sketch that had been issued. The guy looked like a young man with dark hair and dark eyes, no distinguishing marks, nothing to tell him apart from the thousands of dark-haired white men in LA.

“It’s not completely useless,” Dan protested. “We know we’re not looking for a blond guy. Or a woman. Or a person of color. This _helps,_ Chloe.”

“Yeah, well, not enough.” Chloe shoved her desk chair out and lowered herself into it carefully, groaning a little as she got off her feet. 

Dan stepped a little closer, lowering his voice. “Hey, are you doing okay?”

“No, I’m not, Dan, okay? We still have six missing babies – _six babies,_ Dan. And I’m about two months away from giving birth and being on maternity leave, which means the clock is ticking to find this asshole.”

“That’s not all that’s bothering you, Chloe. This isn’t just ‘Chloe is frustrated with work.’ I can tell.” Dan crouched down beside her desk, looking up at her with a soft expression, lowering his voice to give them more privacy. “Is it anything I can help with?”

Chloe hesitated and finally shook her head. “No. No, the problem is that I haven’t seen Lucifer again since he dropped by two months ago.”

Dan’s face went suspiciously blank, and Chloe frowned at him. 

“What?”

“Nothing,” Dan said quickly.

“Dan. Just say whatever it is you’re thinking.”

Dan hesitated before blurting, “Are you really surprised?”

Chloe groaned. “Dan, come _on_ –”

“I’m just saying, are you surprised he shows up, finds you knocked up, and takes off again? I mean, he’s never exactly been dependable.”

“No, I know that. And I didn’t ask anything of him when I saw him. But he promised me that he’d be back.”

Dan’s lips pinched in and he stood up, shaking his head. “And you believed that? Chloe, come on. You know him.”

“ _Exactly_. I _know_ him, Dan. I know that when he promises to do something, he does it unless he really, really can’t. I’m worried about him, okay? He’s…he’s going through some things. I just…hope he’s okay.”

“Yeah, well…don’t stress yourself out worrying about him. I remember during the pregnancy with Trixie that the doctor told you that stress was bad for you and the baby.”

Chloe gave Dan a narrow-eyed look and he put his hands up, palms towards her.

“Peace, okay? I’m just pointing out that now isn’t the time to wrap yourself up in emotional crap. Lucifer is gonna do what Lucifer is gonna do. You have to think about yourself and your baby.”

“Thanks, Dan,” Chloe said, voice flat. “I’ll do that.”

“Look, I need to go,” Dan said, snatching the police artists’ sketch of the perp from her desk taking a step backwards, moving back towards his own desk. “These aren’t going to distribute themselves, right?”

Chloe watched Dan walk away with a tight expression before shaking her head and sighing.

* * * * *

It was after 5pm and Chloe was stacking the last few files on her desk to be dealt with the next morning when Ella came rushing over, a hopeful smile on her face.

“Hey, are you leaving?”

“Uh, yeah. Why, did you need something?” Chloe asked, straightening up slowly.

“I know you told me you didn’t want to talk about the baby shower,” Ella began.

“Because I don’t,” Chloe said firmly. “Look, I’m trusting you to plan everything. No stupid games. That’s my one request.”

“Right, exactly, I know. I just wanted to let you know that’s it’s next Saturday. At your place.”

“Wait, what?”

“Yup. Invitations are going out today. So…you aren’t busy next Saturday, right? Nothing planned?”

“I…I….no, I don’t have any plans next Saturday,” Chloe admitted, almost groaning the words. 

“Awesome! I promise, this is going to be _great,_ ” Ella enthused.

“I just…I’ve never really liked the whole ‘baby shower’ thing, you know? The precinct had one for me with Trixie and it just felt so awkward and…stupid. Little pink bows on everything, and a cake made of diapers…”

“I promise, this isn’t going to be stupid,” Ella said, putting one hand over her heart and raising the other like she was giving an oath in court. “I have like, ten baby showers that I’ve been to with my cousins’ babies that gave me a lot of ideas for what _not_ to do. It’s going to be really super simple and definitely useful. I’ve given everyone really strict instructions of what kind of gifts they should bring.”

Chloe groaned, rubbing her forehead with one hand as she looked doubtfully at Ella for a moment. Finally, she dropped her hands to her sides, letting them smack against her thighs. “All right! I’m trusting you with this.”

“Good! Next Saturday, 11am, your place.”

“I’ll be there,” Chloe said, adding under her breath, “unfortunately.”


	11. Chapter 11

Chloe saw Dan the next day as she was getting ready to head out to lunch. He hadn’t been to his desk yet that morning, and she made a beeline for him, dodging around a small grouping of uniformed officers taking a minute to gossip in the middle of the bullpen.

He was so focused on what he was reading in the open file folder in his hands that he didn’t even notice her lumbering her way up to him until the shadow of her belly fell over the sheet of paper he was scanning.

“Dan, I want to try talking with Lisa and Connor Bradshaw again.”

Dan looked up from the file in his hand, a distracted expression on his face. “Why?”

“I just…I feel like there’s something we’re missing there. I want to talk to them again, see if I can narrow it down at all. Maybe show them the sketch of the perp.”

“Oh, the ‘useless’ sketch?” Dan said, slapping shut the file folder in his hands and leaning back in his desk chair, raising his eyebrows at her.

“I mean, maybe they know Generic White Guy #1,” Chloe said, trying to make a joke out of it. Dan didn’t smile. After a second, Chloe sighed. “You’re lead on this case, so if you really don’t want me to talk to them again, I won’t.”

“You know what?” Dan said after a brief hesitation, lowering the file in his hand to dangle beside his leg. “Go for it. I bet you’re losing your mind, being stuck behind a desk all day. Talking to them will give you something to do, and you’re right: maybe they will know something that can help. I’ll take any break I can get in this case.”

* * * * *

The Bradshaws were able to meet Chloe at their home; Lisa apparently didn’t have studio hours on Thursdays, and Connor worked from home most days, meaning Chloe didn’t have to waste her time hunting them down and talking to them individually. Chloe parked in front of their upper-middle-class home, noting the carefully maintained grass of the lawn, wondering how much they were paying for the services to keep that much grass that lush and perfect in LA.

Lisa answered the door, her brown bob as sleek as the first time Chloe had seen her. Did this woman never get flyaways? It made Chloe self-consciously smooth her hand over her own hair, which was pulled back into a messy ponytail and definitely had a few flyaways escaping from it.

“Mrs. Bradshaw,” Chloe said, putting on a business-like smile as Mrs. Bradshaw ushered her into the house. The front door led directly into a plush carpeted living room. It was alarmingly _beige_ : the carpet was dark beige, the couches a paler beige, the curtains a beige that almost made it to brown but not quite, the walls a beige that almost made it to white but stopped just short…and the only art on the wall were ‘statement pieces’ with a single primary color slashed across a white canvas. The paintings were definitely a safer choice of artwork: nothing controversial or too opinionated, nothing that would put off visiting friends or acquaintances.

Despite the obvious expensiveness of the beige furniture and the natural wood of the bookcases and end tables in the room, somehow the house didn’t look _lived_ in. It was as if the Bradshaws had picked out their décor from a home decoration magazine by opening it to a random page and saying, “Give us everything pictured here.”

So, the Bradshaws had enough money for a big house and a lush lawn, but not enough taste to make it their own. Still, nothing to hold against them. They were boring and didn’t want to offend guests visiting their home. Still, that level of blandness made Chloe fight to keep a grimace off of her face. Her own apartment had come furnished, but she had made it her own with Trixie’s artwork and favorite throws tossed over the back of the couch and touches here and there that took the building from ‘apartment’ to ‘home.’ She couldn’t imagine _not_ wanting to personalize your space.

“Thank you for agreeing to meet with me again,” Chloe said, drawing her attention back to the slim woman standing before her and trying to ignore The Room of Beige.

“Not at all, Detective! Both Connor and I just feel _sick_ about what’s happening. A lot of these women have been in my classes since the beginning of their second trimesters! You get to know each other in these classes, get to know the babies growing inside their mamas.” Lisa’s face twisted and she pressed a hand to her chest over her stretchy tank top. Chloe wondered idly if the woman ever dressed in anything that didn’t look like she was about to go for a 10-mile run. “Have you found any of their babies yet?”

“No, ma’am, but the case is still open. We’re actually hoping that you or Mr. Bradshaw might be able to give us a little more information that will help us find the person who’s been doing this.”

“Anything we can give, we will,” Lisa vowed as she walked through the living room, leading Chloe into the kitchen. 

The beige wave had crashed to a halt in this room. Everything was starkly white or gleaming chrome instead, a brilliant contrast that almost made Chloe take a step back into the monotony of the living room.

Connor Bradshaw was standing in front of the shining chrome-and-white stove, stirring something in a large pot that smelled fantastic. Chloe felt like she was always hungry these days, although she could usually only fit in half a meal before she was out of room in her stomach. Her abdomen was mostly baby at nearly 33 weeks, and yet she still had a minimum of five weeks to go. Considering Trixie had gone over 40 weeks, she could have as much as two months of pregnancy left. It didn’t bear thinking about, and she quickly forced a smile to her face as she stepped fully into the kitchen, facing Lisa’s husband.

Connor turned with a smile, his eyebrows going up as he took in Chloe’s belly. “You look like one of Lisa’s students right before they pop. How far are you?”

“Almost 33 weeks,” Chloe said, smiling and rubbing at her huge abdomen absently. 

“Almost there, mama,” Lisa said with an encouraging smile as she sat on a white barstool next to the white-painted center kitchen island, resting her clasped hands on the white marble top. “So, what can we help you with?”

“Have either of you seen this man?” Chloe opened the file folder she had tucked under one arm and pulled out the sketch of the perp the uniformed officer had seen. Lisa leaned over to get a better look. After putting a lid over the simmering liquid in the pot on the stove, Connor came up behind her, resting his hands on her shoulders affectionately.

“I don’t think so,” Connor said with furrowed brows, and Lisa shook her head. 

“I mean, he looks like dozens of men I see every day on the streets, but not like anyone in particular,” Lisa said.

Chloe pressed her lips tightly for a second; it had been a long shot, but she had hoped…

“All right. Can you think of anything the women might have had in common besides your class? We’ve tried checking their doctors and the hospitals they gave birth in, but we couldn’t find anything.”

“No,” Lisa said, frowning. “They weren’t even all in the same classes. Different days, different times…”

“Hey, Lees, do you know where – oh. Uh.”

Everyone turned towards the voice in the kitchen entryway. Chloe frowned slightly, recognizing the young man standing in the doorway in a white tank top and torn jeans, frozen in surprise to find a stranger in the kitchen. He’d been mopping the studio floor when she and Dan had first questioned Lisa Bradshaw at Chakra Studios.

“Weren’t you at the studio when I came by a few weeks ago?”

“Uh, yeah?” The man looked between Lisa and Chloe, shifting from foot to foot in the doorway, his dark hair falling heavily onto his forehead, a sharp contrast to the white walls that surrounded the doorway.

“Jon, right?”

“I’m sorry,” Lisa said, standing up from the bar stool. “This is my younger brother, Jon Carlson.”

“Carlson. But your maiden name is Wilcox,” Chloe said, remembering the information from the files she’d poured over for months.

“My mother gave my brother up for adoption when I was only eight. That’s actually how Connor and I first met: he helped me when I started searching for Jon.” Lisa gave Connor a fond look, a smile tugging at her lips before she refocused on Chloe. “I only managed to find Jon last year, and we’ve been trying to make up for lost time since then.” Lisa walked over to put a hand on Jon’s shoulder, leading him into the bright kitchen with an equally bright smile on her face.

Now that she saw the two standing so close, she could see the similarity between them. Jon had the same sleek dark brown hair as Lisa, the same dark blue eyes, and even had a similar facial structure.

“Well, this is lucky,” Chloe said, smiling at the young man. “Jon, you work at your sister’s studio. Can you think of anything the women from the prenatal yoga classes had in common?”

Jon’s eyes widened and he looked over at Lisa, his alarm obvious. 

“It’s okay, Jon. This is Detective Chloe Decker. She’s working on the murders and trying to find the missing babies. Anything you can tell her will help.” Lisa’s voice was gently encouraging and she was rubbing her hand in circles on Jon’s back as she spoke.

“I don’t like cops,” Jon said, his eyes sweeping over Chloe quickly before dropping to his bare toes on the white tiles of the floor.

Lisa sighed, rubbing her palm over Jon’s shoulder and giving it a little squeeze. “Jon had a rough life. The couple that adopted him…they weren’t very good parents. They…well, they had addictions and money problems and Jon was left to fend for himself most of the time. He was hassled by the police a lot growing up.”

“I’m not here to hassle anyone,” Chloe said soothingly. “I just want to find the person who did this so I can get the babies back to their families.”

Jon glanced up at her again, a tiny flash of dark blue eyes meeting hers, before lowering his face once again to point at the floor. “I don’t know anything. Sorry.”

Chloe hesitated. She felt like she was missing something, the feeling a tiny tickle at the back o her mind that wouldn’t let up, but she couldn’t put her finger on what it was she wasn’t seeing. Finally, she smiled and said, “Thank you, Jon. I appreciate you trying to help.”

Jon slunk away quickly, like a kicked dog. Chloe could almost imagine a tail tucked submissively between his legs.

“Jon is trying to recover from a lot of bad things,” Lisa said softly, her face worried as she lowered her voice and stepped back towards her husband. She leaned against his side and he wrapped an arm around her comfortingly. “It’s been a hard road for us, trying to win his trust. He moved in with us as soon as I found him and confirmed our relationship, but he spent the first few months hiding out in his room and creeping around like he was afraid we were going to hit him. It took us six months to get him to start opening up about his life after he was adopted.”

“Jon’s legally an adult,” Connor put in, “but he acts like he’s still a kid sometimes.”

“He’s smart as a whip. He’s just…broken, I guess,” Lisa explained. “We’ve been encouraging him to go to therapy; what’s more LA than that?”

The Bradshaws laughed together, and Chloe pasted on a smile.

“He’s been expressing an interest in getting his own place, maybe even moving out of LA,” Lisa continued. “He’s been stashing the money he makes working at the studio, and he’s even picked up a few extra cleaning jobs here and there, helping out in office buildings during the overnight cleanings. I’m not completely comfortable with him moving out yet…but, I’m not his mother. Just his big sister.” She shrugged, but her smile had a sad edge. “I just want what’s best for him, but it’s hard to get through to him you know?”

“Mmm,” Chloe said noncommittally, nodding.

“I’m so sorry!” Lisa exclaimed, standing up straight and giving a little laugh. “You came here to talk to us about my students and I’m unloading all my personal worries on you.”

“I completely understand,” Chloe said, tucking her file folder back under her arm. “If you can think of _anything_ else that might help us, please don’t hesitate to contact me or Detective Espinoza.”

Lisa walked Chloe to the front door, apologizing once more for unpacking her personal life on Chloe, especially at such a “delicate time” for the detective. As Chloe stood by the front door, waiting for Lisa Bradshaw to stop talking so she could take her leave, she noticed Jon peering from around a corner of the living room, watching her with a suspicious expression, his dark eyebrows drawn low over his eyes. How bad had his upbringing been that he was so wary of police officers? She hadn’t seen anything when she’d done the basic background check on him, but juvenile records could be expunged. Still, she made a mental note to check when she got back to the precinct.

* * * * *

Two weeks had passed. The only positive thing that had happened in that time was that no other single mothers had been killed. The case was still dead in the water, and no digging into Jon Carlson’s past or distribution of the artist’s sketch of their perp had gained them any ground. Lucifer still hadn’t come back. And her baby shower was taking place in two days.

Chloe groaned as she lowered herself to the end of her bed, sliding her feet out of the flats she’d taken to wearing as soon as it became difficult to comfortably tie any kind of shoelaces or balance in anything with a heel higher than a kitten heel. She kicked the flats across the room towards her closet, vowing to get them put away properly before she went to bed that night.

Dan had taken Trixie for the week, despite the girl’s protests that she wanted to be at the baby shower. Dan had said he wanted Chloe to have a chance to relax with her friends and was happy to spend the day celebrating Trixie by taking her to a Daddy-and-daughter lunch and out to see a new movie.

Maze was still in Canada, and Chloe had to admit to herself she was privately relieved. The last time someone had thrown a party for her and Maze had been involved, it hadn’t gone well. With Maze in another country, there was a decent chance that the baby shower would be awful but not absolutely intolerable.

The bed was invitingly comfortable under her butt, and it was tempting to just lie down. Her stomach grumbled softly, reminding her that it had been a few hours since the last thing she’d eaten: microwave popcorn at her desk while she typed one-handed on her computer. She definitely needed to eat something more substantial before she could settle in for the night.

Chloe heaved herself off the end of the bed and kicked her shoes until they were inside her closet. Maybe not put away _neatly_ , but they _were_ put away.

Chloe was contemplating going back downstairs to dig through the fridge for something to eat or just calling for a delivery of something spicy and delicious when a sound like a crack of thunder mixed with the tearing of a bedsheet assaulted her ears. She gave a startled jerk as she turned, but there was nothing in her bedroom. From downstairs, she heard a low, soft groan, the sound so full of pain and exhaustion that it alarmed her more than the sound of an unexpected second person in the apartment had done.

Chloe moved as quickly and silently as she could to the small safe that she kept tucked between her bed and nightstand; she kept her service weapon locked inside of it when she was home. She had the code keyed in and the weapon loaded and in her hands in seconds.

Moving carefully with huge belly occluding her feet from sight, feeling her way along with her face toes, she made her way downstairs. She heard another low, pained-sounding groan and raised her service weapon to lead the way into the living room.

Lucifer lay on the floor behind the sofa, facedown and groaning softly. His usually perfect suit was torn and stained and…smoking?

“Oh my God, Lucifer!” she said, securing her gun and hurrying to his side. She lowered herself carefully to the ground, her hips complaining as soon as she got down to her knees beside him, and set the gun down beside her. Chloe hesitated, her hands hovering over his back. She wasn’t sure where to touch him. The low groans indicated he was in pain, but she didn’t see any obvious wounds. “Lucifer?”

His eyes were shut. If it hadn’t been for the intermittent groans, she would’ve thought he was unconscious. 

“Lucifer, I’m going to try to roll you over. If you have any injuries that would make that dangerous for you, please say something, okay?” Chloe hesitated, but he didn’t say anything. He didn’t even give another pained, exhausted groan, and that scared her more than the wisps of smoke still rising from his shredded suit.

She carefully hooked her arms under him, rolling him from his stomach to his back. His arms flopped like a corpse’s and his head lolled from side to side a bit before settling into immobility. His eyes were shut and his mouth hung slightly open, his skin pale and waxy. Some kind of thick orange gunk had dried across his beautiful face and throat, standing out lividly against his unhealthily white skin. It didn’t look like blood, so she ignored it for the moment. She passed her hands over his chest and belly, avoiding the dried orange gunk on his cotton button-up shirt, and then down his legs and arms, checking for any wounds or any spots that felt like the bones might not be fit together quite right. Could the Devil get a broken bone? Goddamnit, there was so much she didn’t know, and he wasn’t conscious enough to help her.

Maneuvering with her almost-eight-months-pregnant belly in the way was infuriatingly difficult. And the baby was reacting to all her bending and stretching with a flurry of kicks and rolls, expressing her displeasure at her mother’s interruptions of her peaceful napping in the only way she could.

Chloe finally sat back with a huff of air. There was nothing wrong with him, other than the torn material of his suit and the smoke that was _still_ rising off of him – was he making it? Exuding it like some kind of other-worldly blood? If Chloe hadn’t seen him bleed before, she would have assumed that the smoke meant he was injured, especially given his seemingly unconscious state. 

“What happened to you?” she whispered, sitting back on her heels. “And what the hell am I supposed to do with an unconscious Devil on my living room floor?”

Her first instinct was to call Maze, but the demon was over 1,000 miles away. She couldn’t help except perhaps to act as a sounding board for Chloe’s guesses about what to do to help the unconscious angel on her living room floor. However, Amenadiel was _much_ closer, and would know considerably more about archangel physiology.

Chloe heaved herself off the floor, steadying herself with a hand on the back of the couch for a second before she headed for the kitchen and her charging cell phone.


	12. Chapter 12

Amenadiel was crouched beside his brother in less than five minutes, his wings still folding in even as he began sweeping his hands along Lucifer’s arms and chest in much the same way Chloe had done minutes before.

“There aren’t any obvious injuries,” Chloe said, hovering just behind Amenadiel, shifting from foot to foot, her arms wrapped around her body in a hug. “But he won’t stop smoking. And he won’t wake up.”

“He’s expended a huge amount of divine energy,” Amenadiel murmured, hands still sweeping along Lucifer’s arms. “Think of it like a battery that’s almost been run dry.”

“But he’s going to be okay?” Chloe asked, her heart suddenly hammering in her chest, her mouth dry.

“I…I think so?” Amenadiel didn’t sound very sure. He rose slowly to his feet, keeping his eyes down on Lucifer as he raised a hand to rub thoughtfully at the one side of his face. “I haven’t ever seen an angel so drained of energy. Whatever happened while he was in Hell nearly killed him.”

Chloe stumbled back a step, suddenly feeling like the air had gone out of the room. She couldn’t _breathe_. Amenadiel was there in a second, catching hold of her upper arms and holding her steady as she sucked in several sharp breaths, the room shimmering in the edges of her vision.

“Whoa, Chloe. He’s _not_ dead. And now that he’s here and no longer expending energy, he’s not likely to die. He just needs to rest and recover.”

“Okay,” Chloe said, her voice sounding weak as she fought to steady her breathing, clinging unconsciously to Amenadiel’s arm. “For how long?”

“A few days? I don’t know. I can’t predict it.” Amenadiel’s expression darkened as he looked away from Chloe and towards the front door. “I’m not worried about him; he will surely recover. What worries me is what will happen _while_ he’s recovering.”

“What do you mean…oh.” Chloe looked up at Amenadiel. Without Lucifer awake and aware, who would be guarding the Gates of Hell?

“I’ll carry him to a bed for you, but then I need to get back to Linda and Charlie. I have to protect them until Lucifer can resume his role as King of Hell.”

“Right. Of course. Um…take him upstairs to my room. I think he’ll be the most comfortable up there.”

Once Lucifer was settled in her bed, Amenadiel helped her by stripping off Lucifer’s suit jacket while she got his shoes off. Finally, Amenadiel stepped back from the bed and looked thoughtfully down at his still-unconscious brother. The smoke had finally stopped rising from Lucifer, and although his suit was still torn in places, he no longer looked quite as dire as he had downstairs on the living room floor. His skin wasn’t bone white anymore, although he still looked paler than normal, his dark lashes, brows, and stubble standing out starkly.

Amenadiel backed away from the bed in quick steps, his eyebrows drawn low over his eyes as he turned to look at the open bedroom door. “I wish I could stay longer, but I don’t trust demons. I need to get back to Charlie.”

“Yeah, of course. Thank you so much for helping,” Chloe said. Amenadiel hurried from the room and was gone before Chloe would even have had time to get down the stairs. She settled gently onto the edge of her bed, reaching out to run her fingers over Lucifer’s dark, disheveled hair. Some of the strands had the same kind of dried gunk that was on his face, and Chloe realized that she could do one thing for him: she could clean him up a little.

With a couple of warm, wet washcloths in hand, Chloe settled once again on the edge of the bed and began gently wiping the dried gunge from Lucifer’s dark hair. It reminded her of trying to get syrup out of Trixie’s hair, an activity she engaged in at least once a week, and she grinned to herself as she worked on the unconscious archangel.

Once his hair was reasonably cleared of the unknown gunk, damp and ruffled from her cleaning efforts and beginning to curl gently, she moved on to the second washcloth and began softly wiping his face. The washcloth made a soft scratching sound as it moved across the stubble on his cheeks and chin. She moved it down his neck in firm swiping motions, reddening his skin with the gentle scrubbing. It was reassuring to see a little color on him; every moment that passed, it seemed he became less dead looking. 

Once her washcloth reached the collar of his button-up shirt, she hesitated a moment. It was liberally spattered and stained with whatever orange stuff had crusted on his face and hair, and after a moment she began undoing the buttons. Once she undid his cuffs, she began working to get the shirt off of him, a difficult prospect when one was almost eight months pregnant and working with an unconscious non-participant. Once she finally managed to get the shirt off, she was sweating and breathing hard.

“Gotta say, the last time I was this worn out in this bedroom with you, it was a lot more enjoyable,” she muttered, dropping the ruined shirt to the floor beside the suit jacket. Lucifer, unsurprisingly, did not respond. Chloe sat silently, watching him sleep. Finally, she reached out to gently run a fingertip along the edge of his jaw before tucking him under the blankets and heading downstairs to find something to eat.

When Chloe woke up the next morning, Lucifer was still unconscious, lying on his back in the same position Chloe had tucked him into the night before. Nothing had changed. He could’ve been a corpse if not for the slow, even rise and fall of his chest. The only improvement was that his skin was its normal healthy tone, no longer waxy and pale like it had been when she found him on the living room floor the night before.

Chloe fumbled for the bedside table, grabbing her cell phone to check the time. It was still early, barely after 6am. She tapped a fingertip against the side of her phone for a moment as she considered her options. She didn’t like the idea of leaving Lucifer alone here, unguarded, especially with the potential of demons figuring out that Hell was currently open to anyone wanting to leave. 

Finally, Chloe called in to the precinct, taking a sick day. That done, she got her weapon from the safe on the other side of the bed, double-checking that it was loaded, and headed to the bathroom to get cleaned up, leaving the gun within easy reach on the counter next to the shower.

Clean and more awake, she brewed coffee while she toasted bread. She headed back upstairs with her simple breakfast, sitting on the foot of the bed while she sipped her coffee, taking care to keep the crumbs from her toast on the plate rather than letting them fall on the comforter. Lucifer didn’t stir once, no matter how loudly she slurped or crunched.

“Okay, I guess it’s going to be a quiet day today,” she said, gathering her empty dishes to head back down to the kitchen. Lucifer made a soft noise and Chloe froze, turning back to the bed. He hadn’t moved, his eyes were still closed, and the noise didn’t repeat. After waiting a few more seconds, Chloe headed downstairs. 

The day passed quietly. Dan texted once he realized she wasn’t at the precinct and she told him she didn’t feel great and just needed a quiet day. He offered to bring food by, but she declined. She gave him the excuse that she didn’t want him to get whatever she had. Chloe stayed in the bedroom for the most part, reading through interesting sections of the books Linda had loaned her, something she’d been trying to get through for several months. 

It allowed her to be comfortable and also keep an eye on Lucifer, despite the fact that he did very little all day long.

It was almost dinnertime when he twitched once, just a slight shake of his head, and Chloe tensed, holding her breath. He didn’t move again and she returned to her book.

She’d been reading for several minutes when she heard a soft intake of breath, a break in the steady rhythm that had been the constant background track to her day.

“Detective?” Lucifer’s voice was soft and muzzy, and Chloe immediately lowered her book onto the mound of her belly and pushed herself up on her elbows, twisting to look at him.

“Lucifer? Hey, are you feeling okay?”

“Peachy,” he said, the word almost a rasp. He cleared his throat softly. “So, I made it here? Wasn’t sure…if I would.”

“What happened? Where have you _been?_ ” Chloe asked, shifting slightly closer to him and moving the book from her belly onto the bedside table when it became obvious that he wasn’t about to drift off again.

“Apparently, some of my subjects decided it was time to overthrow their King.” Lucifer gave a dry laugh. “A bit like an ant farm deciding it was time to try and make it on their own and get the humans out of the way. Ended about the same, I expect.”

“Oh.” Chloe grimaced. “You had to…”

“Squish a lot of them, I’m afraid. I wanted to give them a chance…but they didn’t want a chance. Thousands…and I’m not even sure I got everyone involved.” Lucifer’s face twisted for a moment with something…pain? Sorrow? Chloe couldn’t identify it, and it was gone an instant later as he looked over at her, his face tensing in worry. “I was afraid…” He trailed off, taking a slow, strangled breath. “Afraid I’d get back here too late.”

“Too late? For what?” Chloe asked, confused.

“The baby.”

Chloe gave a quick laugh, pushing herself up into a sitting position, her huge belly on prominent display under the T-shirt she wore. “Nope. She’s still in here.”

Lucifer’s eyes widened as he took in her expanded size. “Goodness me, Detective, are you having a baby or a kindergartner?”

Chloe snorted, reaching down to rub both hands over her belly. “Wow. Thanks. I’m not even due yet, Lucifer. Another couple of months at least.”

Lucifer made a soft sound of disbelief in his throat, and the hand closest to her slid across the comforter, the motion slow and laborious. It stopped near her knee and fluttered as if trying to rise. Lucifer’s eyes shut and he made a frustrated sound low in his throat.

Chloe reached out, taking his hand in hers, and lifted it gently to put it on the swell of her abdomen, right over a spot she’d just felt movement from the growing baby within. There was another tiny twitch directly beneath Lucifer’s hand. One corner of his mouth ticked up slightly.

“There she is,” he murmured.

Chloe held his palm on the spot, her thumb stroking gently over the soft skin on the back of his hand. She was used to his skin feeling almost hot under hers, but he was clammy now. And he couldn’t even lift his hand to put it on her belly, despite it being literally inches away from him.

“Lucifer, are you…are you going to be okay?”

“Had to use a lot of energy,” he said, his voice getting softer. Chloe leaned forward slightly, straining to make out the words. “I need…to rest. I’ll be fine…eventually.”

“Are you sure?” Chloe asked, but he didn’t reply. His hand had gone completely limp in hers and his breathing had returned to the same steady rhythm he’d had before the short wakening. 

Chloe lowered his hand back on top of the comforter before sliding off the bed. He’d woken up; wasn’t that a good sign? True, it had taken almost 24 hours for him to open his eyes after he’d landed, smoking, on her living room floor...but what did she know about the recovery time for celestials? Even Amenadiel had only been able to say ‘a few days.’

Chloe made her way downstairs, debating texting Ella to cancel the baby shower the next day. She knew the other woman had put a lot of effort into planning the event, and it wasn’t likely that Lucifer would be much of a disturbance upstairs in her bedroom, unconscious. But what if he woke up while multiple people were over? Sure, Linda was in the know…but Ella? Her mother? Any other female officers that Ella thought were important enough to invite to the baby shower?

Chloe made it to the kitchen and unplugged her cell phone, holding it in her hand and staring at the lock screen in indecision. The knock on the front door surprised her, and Chloe hesitated next to the end of the kitchen counter. Had Dan decided to drop by unannounced, despite her encouraging him to stay away? She hoped not; this late in the day, he’d have Trixie with him. If what Lucifer needed was rest, the sound of a small child plunging through the apartment would not help him.

Phone in hand, Chloe circled around the counter and to the entryway. She opened the front door and blinked in surprise, momentarily stunned into stupidity.

“Hey, Detective,” Jon Carlson said, hands shoved deep into the pockets of an oversized hoodie. He stared down at her burgeoning belly, avoiding her eyes.

“Jon. Did you remember something?” Chloe asked, trying to figure out what could have brought the young man to her apartment. Wait, how had he gotten her home address? Sudden fear tingled through her, tightening her muscles.

Her phone vibrated in her hand and she looked at it out of reflex, the message from Dan displayed on her lock screen:

_Bian Le wrote ‘Jon yoga’ today. Going to Bradshaws’ now._

Oh. Oh, _no._

Jon stepped forward suddenly, bumping into her and causing her to stumble backwards into the apartment, her phone tumbling from her hand and skidding over the hardwood floor and across the living room, fetching up against the far wall, fully twenty feet away. He had the front door shut before Chloe was able to regain her balance, her huge third-trimester belly making it even more difficult for her to gain her bearings after being suddenly shoved backwards.

“What are you doing?” Chloe snapped, wishing suddenly she hadn’t left the gun on the upstairs bedside table. 

“You’re getting too close,” Jon said, his voice soft. “It was okay at first. You questioned Lisa and Connor, but no one really paid much attention to me. No one ever really does. But then you came to the house, and, man…that’s just too close.”

Chloe sucked in a sharp breath, taking a step backwards as the certainty swept over her. Dark hair, dark eyes, nondescript white guy…Jon definitely fit the description the uniformed officer had given. And Lisa Bradshaw’s Jeep had been at the scene of Adrianna Martinez’s murder, a Jeep he would’ve had access to given that there was more than one set of keys he could have easily taken without the Bradshaws being suspicious.

“It was you,” she breathed, and turned to try and scramble to the stairs, heading for her weapon in her bedroom.

Jon jerked her to a stop by her ponytail, causing Chloe to stumble, her arms flying out as she tried to grab something to regain her balance. She half-turned as she stumbled, and Jon’s hand flew out, striking her across the face. The pain was immense, the blow hard enough to split the skin over her cheekbone.

Chloe cried out as she fell, her arms bracing to try and protect her belly. She struck one hip and both palms against the hardwood floor with bruising force, drawing another shout of pain from her as the pain lanced up from both arms and her injured hip. Jon was on her in a second, his lips drawn back from his teeth in a snarling grin as he fumbled roughly at her shoulders to get her flipped onto her back. She tried to fight back, but she was still reeling from the blow to her face and the fall to the floor, her thoughts not quite caught up to what was happening.

“There’s a lot of money in private, no-questions-asked, cash-only adoptions, you know?” he said, almost panting the words as he wrapped his fingers around her throat from behind. Chloe twisted to fall onto her back, freeing her hands to strike them up into his forearms, breaking his grip on her throat and knocking him back from her a few precious inches. Still on her back, she scrabbled with beetle-like movement on hands and feet, moving backwards. Further from Jon, closer to the stairs and her gun.

Jon was on her in seconds, though, landing hard on her thighs and causing her arms to slip out from under her. The back of her head collided with the bottom step of the stairs, and for a second everything slid away from Chloe. The room came back into a focus only seconds later, but it was all the time Jon had needed to get his hands around her throat again. She tried to knock his arms away once more, but he was ready for it this time, and his grip on her throat only tightened.

“Working at the studio, it’s been real easy to listen to the women talk and figure out who didn’t have anyone else at home. Made it easier to take their babies later. And with Connor’s private adoption business, I could find the couples that he’d denied a baby and contact them. They were like, stupidly eager to pay whatever I asked for a chance at a baby, no questions asked.”

Chloe couldn’t breathe. She tried to dig her nails into his hands, but the oversized hoodie was hanging over his hands, protecting him to a degree. He shook her roughly by her throat, making her arms drop down from his hands. She couldn’t _breathe,_ and her head was beginning to pound not only from the blow to the stairs but also from lack of air and blood.

“Once the women missed a few classes, I could use the listed address in the prenatal yoga class signups to scope out their homes. Easy. Even killing them was easy after the first few. I even kind of like the fight.” He leaned a little closer, his seat bones grinding into her thighs as his fingers tightened with bruising force. “Kind of a waste to kill you. I mean, you’re what? 34 or 35 weeks? If you’d just waited another couple of weeks to come to Lisa’s house, I could’ve had another baby. Too bad.”

Chloe tried to say something, do something, but her vision was going spotty and sparkly. Jon seemed to be receding slowly, and even the pain of him crushing her legs and his fingers digging into her throat was fading away and becoming unimportant.

Out of the corner of her eyes, she thought she saw movement on the stairs, but everything seemed to be going away at great speed and Chloe realized that this was _it_. This was how she was going to die, and her baby was going to die with her.

Sorrow roiled in her for a second, but even that seemed to be sliding away from her as her lack of air began to take systems offline in her brain, like closing down programs on her work computer at the end of the day. Click, click, click…

Lucifer’s roar of fury was the first sound Chloe heard, louder even than her desperate, high-pitched wheeze as she drew in a lungful of air when Jon was suddenly knocked off of her and his hands released their squeezing pressure on her throat. She began coughing, the hacking expulsions of air painful and completely out of her control. She sucked in another breath and began trying to roll to her side, tears leaking down her cheeks.

Lucifer was in front of her, between her and Jon, on one knee with both hands resting palm-down on the wood floor, wearing only his torn slacks and his socks. He was breathing almost as hard as she was, his bare back heaving with the sharp inhales. Jon scrambled to his feet next to the couch as he looked between Chloe and Lucifer, his eyes going wide as realization passed over him.

And he ran. He slammed through the front door, leaving it hanging open. The cool night air blew in, feeling almost freezing on Chloe’s cheeks where the tracks of tears had streaked. 

Lucifer collapsed to the floor as soon as Jon was out the door, all the strength going out of him in a rush as his arms crumpled and his eyes closed. Chloe heard the side of his head impact with the wood below, a horrible, hollow sound that _scared_ her.

“Lucifer!” she croaked, crawling towards him on trembling arms and legs. Her progress was slowed by the fact that she was still choking intermittently, the coughs so intense that she had to lean down onto her forearms as she rode out the heavy, painful expulsions of air from her wounded throat. Once she was beside him, he turned his head with effort, his eyes barely open and not really focused as he sought her out. 

“…’tec…tive,” he whispered, and the strength went out of Chloe. She sank down beside him, leaning onto her unbruised hip and one elbow as she reached out with her free hand, stroking it over the side of his face.

“Are you okay?” Her voice was a pained rasp, forcing itself through the swelling flesh of her damaged throat, but he obviously understood her. Lucifer gave a small snort, dismissing the question of out hand. 

“Y…you?”

“I’m okay,” Chloe said, and another coughing fit nearly ripped her in two, making her words a lie. “I’ll be okay,” she amended once she stopped coughing and caught her breath. “You saved me, Lucifer.”

“Good,” he murmured, and then his eyes shut and he was out again.

Chloe pillowed her head on her arm, lying down beside him on the floor. She would call for help in a minute. She had to let Dan know that they knew their murderer for sure now. They needed to start hunting for the babies. But she just needed a minute first.

Chloe curled her body around her belly, feeling the baby kicking as she reacted to her mother’s stress. Chloe reached out and laid one hand against Lucifer’s bare arm, taking comfort in the warmth of his skin under her shaking fingers, and for just a few minutes, she rested.


	13. Chapter 13

“Chloe?!” She could hear Dan screaming her name through the still-open front door before he was even in the apartment, and she pushed herself up into a sitting position once again, her entire body complaining at the movement. She’d called him only twenty minutes before, after crawling slowly across the living room to retrieve her cell phone from where Jon had knocked it during their fight. For Dan to have made it from the Bradshaws’ house to her apartment so quickly meant he must have driven all the way with his siren blasting and taken quite a few unnecessary risks in traffic.

Still, she’d had time to rouse Lucifer enough to get him propped against the back of the couch. He hadn’t been able to stand up and sit on the couch like a civilized person, but at least he wasn’t lying prone on the floor anymore. She’d leaned against him and, she was a little ashamed to realize, dozed off.

But she was awake now. She cleared her throat and immediately winced; the inside of her throat _hurt_. It was worse than the time she’d had strep throat and tried to ignore it for a few days for college finals. She reached up, touching the outside of her throat, and winced again. She hadn’t managed to check herself in a mirror yet, but she was pretty sure the skin of her throat was a mess of bruises.

Dan burst into the apartment, head swinging rapidly from the kitchen to the dining area to the living room. His dark eyes took in the scene in one quick, assessing glance, and then he was scrambling over to Chloe and Lucifer, dropping roughly to his knees on the hard floor as he reached out for her throat, his face twisting in horror.

“Oh, God, Chloe.” His voice was weak, and she could see the shine of unshed tears in his eyes. She could only guess at what unhealed emotional wounds from Charlotte’s murder this situation would be pricking for him. Guilt roiled in her, and she fought to look like she was managing her near-throttling just fine.

“I’m okay,” she croaked, her voice rough and awful-sounding. “Lucifer scared him off.”

Dan cast a quick glance at Lucifer, who was awake and aware again, although he was sitting shirtless and exhausted against the back of the couch rather than standing and making biting remarks.

“Thanks, man.” Dan’s eyes sharpened as he took in Lucifer's general air of dishevelment and exhaustion. “Hey, you look pretty rough. What happened to you?”

“An…unrelated matter. It’s already been dealt with,” Lucifer said, doing a passingly good imitation of his usual verve, although he made no attempt to move from his seat on the floor, his back propped against the back side of the couch and his legs splayed wide on the floor, his usually animated hands resting passively on his thighs.

“I already called for backup,” Dan said, turning his attention away from Lucifer and focusing on Chloe once more. “They should be here soon. C’mon, Chlo, let’s get you up.”

Dan helped her stand, and Chloe found that she had a lot more bruises than she’d originally thought as body parts started reporting in as soon as she was on her feet. She made her way carefully around the couch and took a seat.

“What about you?” Dan asked, and Chloe twisted to see him standing in front of Lucifer.

“Hmm,” Lucifer said, in a musing voice, his dark eyebrows raising slightly. “Never took you for the ‘sweep me onto my feet’ type.”

“Oh, c’mon, man,” Dan said in an aggrieved tone, dragging Lucifer up by the wrists. For a moment it looked like Lucifer was going to collapse back onto the floor, but Chloe saw him gathering himself. He walked towards the recliner next to the couch, his movements incredibly slow, but he was moving under his own power. He sat down with more of a thump than he usually did, but he didn’t completely collapse into the chair. He was improving.

“Do you have a shirt somewhere you can put on?” Dan asked, gesturing at Lucifer’s bare torso and glancing back towards the front door, obviously thinking of the incoming unis.

“It’s…uh, ruined,” Chloe said. Dan raised both eyebrows at her and she snorted a soft laugh. “No, Dan, it’s not like that. Look, just…see if there’s a T-shirt upstairs that he can wear.”

“Oh, goodie, another T-shirt. Will this one have a pithy logo on it, too?” Lucifer muttered, and Chloe remember the horrible green T-shirt from Javier’s he’d worn years before.

“Maybe just a plain white T-shirt?” she suggested, and Dan shook his head before hurrying upstairs to her bedroom. He returned a few minutes later, carrying one of the oversized white T-shirts she kept in her pajama drawer for warm nights. Even though it was large on Chloe, it fit Lucifer almost like a second skin. It wasn’t his usual bespoke suit, but Chloe had to admit that he looked good.

With Lucifer once again mostly clothed, Dan turned businesslike and focused on Chloe. “All right. So…you can confirm this was the guy from the yoga studio that Bian Le named?”

“Jon Carlson,” Chloe agreed, nodding. “He’s been using the records at the yoga studio to find single moms and getting into rejected potential adopter files from Connor Bradshaw’s private adoption agency to locate buyers. The Bradshaws need to be warned in case he heads back home to their place.”

“I’ll send a uni,” Dan said, reaching for his cell phone and turning away. “And put out an APB for Jon Carlson.”

Dan stepped into the kitchen and Chloe leaned towards Lucifer, her belly landing against her thighs and preventing her from leaning all the way out. She shuffled forward on the couch until she was sitting on the edge of the cushion, feeling each bruise on her body complaining as she did so, and reached out to touch Lucifer's knee, her belly hanging between her knees as she leaned.

“Lucifer? Are you okay?”

“Better and better,” he said, his voice paper-thin. 

“Are you sure? I mean, you seem so…quiet.”

Lucifer laughed softly, letting his eyes shut for a few seconds. “I _am_ sometimes quiet, Detective.”

“Yeah, and it’s never been a good thing.” Chloe gave a little jump as the baby kicked in protest over her cramped quarters, and Chloe straightened up. Lucifer’s eyes opened as he noted her movement, and he raised a single questioning eyebrow. Chloe gestured towards her rounded abdomen. “She’s being really active right now. I guess everything that happened has her pretty worked up.”

Lucifer’s eyebrows drew down and he struggled to sit up, fingers whitening as they tightened on the arms of the recliner. “Is she all right?”

“Probably?” Chloe rested her hands on her abdomen, feeling the bumps and thumps of the baby moving around.

“That’s next on the list,” Dan said, coming back from the kitchen and shoving his cell phone into a pocket. “Once you’ve given your statements, you’re going to the hospital. We’re not taking any chances here, Chlo.”

“Surprisingly, I agree with Daniel,” Lucifer said, lowering himself back to lean into the recliner again, still staring at her rounded abdomen with a troubled expression.

“Yeah, of course,” Chloe said, glancing between the serious looks on both men’s faces. “No problem.”

“I will be coming along,” Lucifer said, his eyes closing again.

“Lucifer, are you sure that’s a good idea?” Chloe asked. “I mean…you’re barely staying conscious.”

“And your pants are kind of a mess, man,” Dan pointed out. Chloe had almost forgotten the slashes and tears in Lucifer’s once-beautiful suit, but Dan was right: the pants were as mangled as the jacket and his button-up shirt had been.

“An unbelievable waste of a $2,000 Hugo,” Lucifer murmured. “It doesn’t matter right now, though. I _need_ to go with you, Detective.”

Chloe opened her mouth to argue and then shut it, sighing softly. She could already tell that this wasn’t a battle she was going to win. She could potentially wait for him to pass out again and sneak out, but he wouldn’t thank her for it later. Better to take a little discomfort on his part now than a whole lot on both of their parts later.

“Yeah. Fine. Okay, you can come along to the hospital,” Chloe acquiesced.

“As long as you don’t mind making a detour by Lux, we shouldn’t raise too many eyebrows in hospital, I think,” Lucifer murmured. Chloe and Dan exchanged a look and Dan shrugged in response to her raised eyebrows.

“Yeah, fine. I’m already paying an arm and a leg for a last-minute overnight sitter; might as well throw in the other leg while I’m at it,” Dan said.

And that was how Chloe found herself staring at an ultrasound image of her baby at 1am with the Devil on her shoulder – quite literally. Lucifer was leaning over her to get a better look, his expression fascinated as the ultrasound tech pointed out facial features.

It had been a few months since Chloe had last seen her baby, and she was almost as fascinated as Lucifer to see how the baby had changed. Her tiny face had filled out quite a bit, round cheeks and pouting lips easily visible on the ultrasound. As they watched, the baby raised a miniscule hand to her mouth and began to suck her thumb. Chloe heard Lucifer’s almost silent huff of laughter, felt his chest kick against her shoulder, and she didn’t fight the smile that took over her face.

“You’re kind of crushing my arm, Lucifer,” she murmured, and Lucifer leaned back slightly.

“It’s just fascinating, Detective. You’ve got a whole human in there.”

“Yeah, well…hopefully not for too much longer.” Chloe smiled politely as the ultrasound tech handed her a towel to wipe off the goo still smeared liberally over her abdomen. Lucifer watched with a faint smile.

“Am I entertaining you?” Chloe asked.

“Just reminds me of the time I filled a kiddie pool with blue Jell-O and re-enacted a round of wrestling with a trio of beautiful women,” Lucifer murmured, picking up the bottle of ultrasound gel and peering at it thoughtfully.

“Hah. Well, this is definitely less enjoyable,” Chloe said, pulling her shirt over her belly as she rolled to her side to get off the exam table.

“Everything good?” Dan asked as they exited the exam room a few minutes later, Chloe still trying to tug her shirt into place. She’d missed wiping off some of the ultrasound gel, and her shirt was sticking to it uncomfortably.

“She’s perfect,” Lucifer announced, sounding oddly proud.

Dan’s eyebrows popped up and Chloe looked at Lucifer in amusement. He glanced between them for a moment and then gave a few quick, uncomfortable tugs at his cuffs before gesturing Chloe forward. “Shouldn’t we be going? I believe we have a murderer to punish.”

“Lucifer, we have no idea where he is right now. It’s not likely he’s going back home, but there are officers there in case he’s stupider than he seems,” Chloe explained. “The best thing we can do right now is go home and _rest_.”

Lucifer opened his mouth as if he were going to argue, but Dan cut him off. “That’s where I’m dropping you, anyway. I have to get back to Trixie.”

Lucifer shut his mouth, but he looked disgruntled, like a cat who’d been stroked the wrong way. Still, he didn’t argue as they filled out the last of the paperwork for Chloe’s discharge and made their way out to Dan’s vehicle.

Chloe was almost pitifully grateful to return to her apartment. She didn’t like the way it smelled like different colognes and soaps from the officers who’d come to take her statement, didn’t like the subtle differences in the room that showed strangers had recently been there, but it was still _home_. It was safe, and she could settle in and spend the day resting and – 

Chloe groaned as she realized it was after midnight and now technically Saturday. She would have people showing up in only a few hours for the baby shower.

“Detective?” Lucifer was beside her immediately, a hand on her elbow as he turned her, his face worried as his dark eyes swept over her, looking for the cause of her groan.

“I’m fine. I just remembered that Ella is throwing a baby shower for me later today. Somehow, I have to find the energy to play hostess.”

“A baby shower.” Lucifer sounded nonplussed and stared at her blankly.

“It’s a party to celebrate the mom and baby before the baby gets here. Usually with gifts to help with the baby once it arrives.” Chloe leaned her head down, rubbing a hand across her forehead several times as she thought. “Maybe I should just call Ella in the morning and cancel.”

“You’ll do no such thing, Detective!” Lucifer scolded. “This is a celebration of the both of you, and I insist you be celebrated. Especially after tonight.”

“Lucifer –”

“Absolutely not. You need this. Anyway, knowing that there will be others here with you will allow me to get back to Hell.” His expression darkened and Chloe felt a chill run up her spine. When Lucifer was being his usual charming, Devil-may-care self, it was easy to forget that he was the literal King of Hell. But when he looked like this…

“Will you be gone long?” Chloe asked, her throat suddenly dry. She swallowed thickly, trying to shake away the chill his expression had given her. “The last time you were gone for eight weeks. If you take that long again, you might come back to an ex-utero baby.”

Lucifer shook his head, his expression softening as he reached out to run his hand gently along the side of her face, cupping her jaw for a moment in his warm palm. Chloe blew out a breath, relaxing into the tender touch.  
“I will not take so long this time. It only took so long before because I didn’t want to slaughter thousands of demons for the crime of disobedience. When it became painfully clear that I had no other option, I took out the majority of the dissidents. I _am_ their King, and they _will obey_.”

It was hard to remain relaxed when his voice darkened and deepened like that, and Chloe found herself stepping back from him, wrapping her arms protectively around herself.   
Lucifer didn’t seem to notice, his gaze far away as he continued. “I’m not sure I got to Dromos, though. He instigated the uprising, as far as I can tell…if I’m to avoid small murderous rampages in the future, I’ll need to be sure he’s taken care of. I only left so quickly before because I needed to see that you were safe.”

“I’m lucky you did,” Chloe said. “Otherwise I would’ve been alone when Jon showed up.”

Lucifer’s gaze sharpened on her and he moved closer, as close as her huge belly would allow, pressing his lips to her forehead in a soft kiss, his hands resting gently on her shoulders. 

“Exactly why I want you to avoid being alone until I can come back. Please, Detective.”

Chloe sighed. “You’re right. I know that you’re right.”

“Usually, yes,” Lucifer agreed pleasantly. Chloe pressed her lips, giving him an unamused look, but he was unrepentant.

“All right…then I guess I should try to get some sleep before the baby shower later today.”

“I think I’ll stay until morning,” Lucifer said musingly. “Perhaps nap with you. I still feel a bit…off.”

Chloe gave him a worried glance before taking hold of his hand and leading him upstairs. “Okay, yep, naptime for both of us.”

Curled against Lucifer in her bed, Chloe expected to find it harder to sleep. After all, Lucifer was practically built for sex. However, he seemed to know that neither of them was at their best and instead of doing anything that could be construed as sexual overtures, he soothed her with soft, even strokes of his warm palm along the length of her arm until Chloe began to doze. She was asleep before she even had time to be amazed at how patient and gentle he was being.

* * * * *

The insistent knocking on her front door woke Chloe hours later. She reached out automatically, blinking her eyes open when she felt only cool, empty sheets beside her. Lucifer was gone. Of course, he was gone…and yet, Chloe couldn’t help the feeling of disappointment that swept through her.

The knocking happened again, sounding even more intense than before, and Chloe threw the blankets off and stumbled downstairs, one hand on the wall for balance while she rubbed sleep from her eyes with the other. 

It was only as Chloe was opening the door that she stopped to wonder if she should’ve grabbed her weapon from upstairs.

“Chloe!” Ella cheered as soon as the door opened. Then her smile dropped. “I woke you. Well, that’s not good. Everyone’s going to be here in like, half an hour. Okay, I’ll set up and you go shower.”

“Ella,” Chloe began, but her voice was a raw croak, and Ella’s eyes widened as she seemed to really see Chloe for the first time.

“Oh, my God, what happened to you? Your throat – Chloe?”

“I was attacked,” Chloe said. “Come inside; it’s way too bright out there.”

Ella hurried inside, dragging a wheeled tote box behind her, and Chloe shut the door, closing them in the blessedly dim apartment. Shockingly, only getting a few hours of sleep had not left Chloe feeling fresh and ready to take on the day.

“Attacked? By who? When? What happened?” Ella peppered her with questions, and Chloe raised both hands to fend the smaller woman off.

“You know the mother murders? Well, the murderer in question came after me yesterday evening. Apparently, he thought I was getting too close for comfort. I was lucky that Lucifer was here.”

“Lucifer?” Ella exclaimed. “He’s back? Oh my God, Chloe, that’s really good news! I mean, that _is_ really good news, right?”

“Yeah, it really is,” Chloe admitted, smiling slightly. “Especially since he’s the only thing that kept me from dying last night.”

“Oh, my God, Chloe…!” Ella said, and before she could react, Chloe found herself wrapped in Ella’s embrace. Chloe stood still and let Ella get it out of her system, realizing it would be useless to try and do anything else. “Okay, seriously, go shower. I will handle everything down here! Food should be arriving in, like, ten minutes and I’ll welcome the guests and everything! Just…relax and let me shower you. I mean, not _shower_ you. You can handle that. I mean, _baby_ shower you.”

Chloe shook her head and headed back upstairs to grab fresh clothes before heading towards the shower.

An hour later, she was sitting comfortably on the couch with a plate of food resting on top of her belly while women milled around the steamer-festooned kitchen and living room, chatting and nibbling at the various Chinese food options that Ella had ordered for delivery. Linda was sitting on the recliner nearby, watching Chloe with a faint smile on her face.

“You look beautiful,” Linda confided, and Chloe smirked.

“Throat notwithstanding?” Chloe asked, and Linda’s eyebrows drew in. Once they arrived, all the women had been given a quick rundown on the attack on Chloe the evening before, and Ella had pushed them quickly past worrying over Chloe into getting food and setting up gifts in a pile to prevent them from harassing her.

“How are you feeling after that?” Linda asked gently. 

“Bruised. Tired.” Chloe hesitated, pushing a small heap of steamed rice around her plate with a plastic fork for a second before admitting, “Scared.”

“Completely normal. You were attacked. Honestly, I’d be worried if you _weren’t_ feeling afraid.” Linda set her own plate on the coffee table in front of them. “And Lucifer?”

“Back in Hell. Again. Hopefully not for so long this time,” Chloe said, trying to force a laugh.

“I admit, I’m a little torn. I’m relieved for Charlie’s sake that Lucifer is back in Hell, riding herd over the demons…but I can see how much it upsets you for him to be gone.”

“How is Charlie?” Chloe said, quickly changing the topic.

Linda raised her eyebrows and quirked her lips, letting Chloe know she knew exactly what the other woman was trying to do, but Linda couldn’t stop herself from being a proud mother. She went into a description of the new milestones Charlie was meeting, new sounds he was adding to his babbling, and Chloe was able to relax a little and almost tune out, letting herself drift on the sounds of happy conversation. She was still so unbelievably tired after her tense, sleep-deficient night. 

It wasn’t until she heard a question in Linda’s voice that she checked back in on the conversation.

“Sorry?” Chloe said, leaning forward to put her own plate on the coffee table, refocusing on Linda.

“I asked how you’ve been handling the emotional aspects of carrying an angel’s child. I was an emotional mess during my pregnancy.”

“Oh. I mean, I suppose knowing that Charlie came out perfect helps a lot.” Chloe rubbed her abdomen. “I’m almost at the end, and I still can’t believe I'm actually pregnant some days. I mean, from everything Lucifer and Amenadiel have said, this shouldn’t be possible.” Chloe hesitated before whispering, “I’m pretty sure God had a hand in this.”

Linda looked thoughtful for a moment. “It makes sense. From what I’ve read of Biblical literature, Samael was God’s most favored son. If we’re going to go off the belief that God is still taking an active interest in his children’s lives, then blessing him with a child would make a certain kind of sense.”

“Sorry, Samael?” Chloe shook her head, not following.

“Oh. Before he was cast down, Lucifer was called Samael or the Lightbringer. He only took the name ‘Lucifer’ after he was in Hell.”

“I’m starting to feel like I need to take a class on this or something,” Chloe said, and Linda laughed.

“I know exactly what you mean. Actually, if you’d like to borrow them, I have a few books I’ve picked up about Biblical history. The angels, Satan, those kinds of things,” Linda offered.

“I still haven’t even finished the baby and birth books you loaned me!” Chloe confessed, and they both laughed softly. 

“Ladies!” Ella chirped, bouncing over to them with gift bags dangling from either hand. “Are we ready to do gifts?” 

Chloe looked back and saw a handful of expectantly smiling faces directed at her and quickly forced a smile onto her own face. “Yep. Let’s do this.”

Chloe unwrapped an ungodly number of baby blankets, several packages of diapers, and too many tiny pink things to count before being plied with incredibly pink strawberry cake. 

By the time the women were getting ready to leave, the sugar crash had hit, combining with her exhaustion from her sleepless night, and leaving Chloe thinking wistfully of her bed upstairs. Chloe was unsurprised that her mom, Linda, and Ella had stayed to clean up and take out the trash after the other guests had left, but was almost pitifully grateful that she wasn’t going to have to deal with any of the after-party mess.

“All right, honey, I have to get going. I have an audition in the morning for a new series, and I need to rest up,” Penelope said, giving her daughter a kiss on the cheek and a quick hug. “Don’t forget to call me _the minute_ the new princess arrives, all right? I will come, day or night, to hold my new grandbaby.”

“All right, Mom,” Chloe said, knowing she’d probably give herself a day or so to recover from the birth before calling her mother in. She loved her mother, but she’d been through childbirth once and knew that she would need a few days of rest before facing the woman, for everyone’s sake.

As soon as the door shut behind her mom, Ella was at Chloe’s side. “Hey, is someone else coming over soon?”

“Someone…what? No. Who would be coming over?”

“I just mean, after you were attacked last night…”

Damnit. Chloe had been so tired, she’d lost track of the fact that she really shouldn't to be alone right now. 

“You could come home with me?” Linda suggested. 

“I really just want a nap,” Chloe confessed, and Linda and Ella exchanged a worried glance.

“You could sleep on the couch,” Linda said. “I don’t think it would be wise for you to be home alone, especially with your attacker still out there.”

Chloe hesitated, wanting to say ‘no’ but knowing that it would be incredibly stupid for her to insist on being home alone.

“Knock knock,” Dan called, opening the front door.

“Why would you say ‘knock knock’ if you were already coming in?” Chloe asked, but Trixie was already pushing past Dan and hurrying to throw her arms around her mother’s expanded middle.

“Is the party over, Mommy? We came to take you to a special family dinner!”

Chloe fought off the urge to groan; she was _so tired_. Instead, she forced a smile and shrugged at Ella and Linda. “Guess I have somewhere to be.”

Relief was evident on the faces of both the women and they said their good-byes with a lot less trepidation than they’d had before, leaving Chloe with Dan and Trixie, who was almost vibrating with excitement.

“Daddy said we can go to Chuck E. Cheese!”

“Oh! Wow!” Chloe said, giving Dan a wide-eyed ‘What the hell were you thinking?’ look as he grinned.

“Yep. Go grab your old sneakers. You know Mommy doesn’t like you running around and playing in your good school sneakers.”

“Okay!” Trixie chirped, running off to her room.

“Chuck E. Cheese?” Chloe asked. “Dan, I’m _exhausted_.”

“Exactly,” Dan said, his face changing to a look of concern. “Trixie _really_ wanted to do a special family dinner, since the new baby will be here soon, and I figured this would be the easiest way for everyone to be happy. She can run around and play and we can sit at a table and try not to fall asleep.”

Chloe hesitated, and then gave a wry laugh. “Yeah, okay, I can see the logic of this choice. All right, just give me a second to grab my phone and we can get going.”

“Daddy!” Trixie shouted, running from her bedroom with her old sneakers in her hands. “I almost forgot! Get the baby gift!”

“Ah!” Dan ducked out the front door, reappearing a second later with a pink, glittery gift bag. “Trixie wanted to give the baby a special Big Sister present.”

“Oh, Monkey, that’s so sweet,” Chloe said, crouching with difficulty to give Trixie a hug and a kiss.

“Open it, open it, open it!” Trixie chanted, bouncing on the balls of her feet, her hands clasped in front of her chest.

Chloe pulled the gift wrap out of the bag and looked down at a tiny dark brown teddy bear tucked within. She pulled it out with a smile, stroking her thumb over the soft plush of its tiny muzzle. “It’s adorable. I’m sure your sister will love it, Trix.”

“I know,” Trixie said with the confidence only the very young or the very devilish can evince. “Now let’s go already!”


	14. Chapter 14

Lucifer was unsurprised to find Dromos waiting for him when he appeared at the Gates of Hell. Behind him were arrayed several hundred demons, watching with interest. The demons’ keen eyes swept over their King, and Lucifer did not miss the subtle changes in the creatures’ expressions that indicated they were disappointed to find Lucifer much better than when he’d left.

“Dromos,” Lucifer said, his voice icy. “You have caused me no limit of problems recently.”

“Lucifer!” Dromos cried cheerfully as the archangel stepped through the Gates, sealing them once more behind himself. “You seem fine. Don’t know why you’re so upset.”

“You defy me,” Lucifer snarled, his eyes narrowing at the demon. “You cause trouble for me. I don’t need any other reasons.”

“Just making sure you deserve to rule Hell, my Lord,” Dromos said, giving a low bow. 

“Oh, there’s no question of that,” Lucifer said, moving closer to Dromos, his steps casual and unhurried as he tugged lightly at one cuff to straighten it. “The only question is whether your supporters will be allowed to remain here.”

Lucifer reached out to rest his fingertips against Dromos’ arm and destroyed him with that single touch, the demon disintegrating into ash instantly. Lucifer loathed the necessity of killing yet _another_ demon, especially after he’d had to wipe out so many when he’d finally given up on crawling his way out of the interminable dogpile. How many thousands had he killed in one extreme show of power? And now, one more to add to the collection of corpses at his feet.

The other demons that were watching shifted and murmured amongst themselves, a rippling wave of alarm that traveled through them all.

“Get back to your business,” Lucifer shouted, his voice carrying across the gathered masses. “Do not think to take Dromos’ place at the head of this uprising. You will not succeed in overthrowing me. It has been tried before, and it always ends like this. It _will always_ end like this. I have had enough. I am your _King!_ ”

The final shout echoed across Hell, the proclamation impossible to ignore or deny, no matter where you stood. Even the human souls trapped in their own individual mausoleums of torture felt the threatening power of it, and their own personal Hells were, for one second, shared.

The demons that were gathered before the Gates quickly dispersed, returning to their tortures of the human souls trapped in Hell or whatever else they passed their time with. Lucifer remained where he was until they had all left and then made his way deeper into the bowels of Hell, heading for his throne at the very center. Everything in him wanted to return to Earth and his Detective, but he knew that what was needed now was for him to be visible to the demons. They needed to see their King ruling.

He hated it. He knew Chloe needed him on Earth. She’d almost been killed – would have been killed if he hadn’t been there. But he would have to trust that her human friends could keep her safe until he was able to return.

He would stay. For a _little_ while. He would be visible, he would give tasks, he would take over all the menial idiocies he’d always been responsible for…and then he would take another trip to Earth. He was on a fairly strict timeline, after all. And he was _done_ letting Hell interfere.

* * * * *

After the frenetic energy, noise, and lights of the Chuck E. Cheese, Chloe felt like she was almost stumbling on her feet as she headed towards the front door of her apartment. Dan had insisted that he walk her in to ensure no one was waiting inside for her or waiting along the walkway to ambush her, and he led a sleepy Trixie behind him, her face still sporting a smear of pizza sauce along one side of her mouth, the new plastic bracelets she’d won with her prize tickets clinking and tapping lightly on her wrists as she walked.

“You really don’t need to do this,” Chloe was protesting, not for the first time, as they headed down the quiet sidewalk, the darkness broken here and there with the glow of lights from the other apartments in the complex. She brushed an encroaching elephant ear away from her face as she passed one plant that had gotten especially excited in its growth habits, trying to make a mental note to remind the apartment super about the plant that had been hitting her in the face for the last few weeks. “Trixie looks exhausted; you should take her home.”

“I’m not letting you walk into your apartment alone,” Dan said stubbornly, his brows drawing down slightly. “I’m already not feeling great about leaving you here alone overnight.”

“Yeah, well, Lucifer could be back any time, you know. And I’ll keep my phone _and_ my gun next to the bed.”

Dan snorted a laugh. “I’ll make sure not to call then. The last thing you need is to try and answer a call on your gun.”

Chloe wanted to laugh, but she was tired enough that it was a real possibility. Maybe she should leave the gun inside the safe and just leave the safe unlocked?

Her musings were interrupted when she realized the lights in her apartment were blazing.

“I didn’t leave any lights on when we left,” she said softly, reaching out a hand to touch Dan’s arm. Alarm swept over his face and he immediately went for his service weapon, using one elbow to nudge Trixie closer to Chloe. Both of them were instantly much more awake than they’d been a few minutes before, Trixie’s dark eyes huge and uncertain as she clung to her mother’s side.

Dan moved forward cautiously, reaching out to try the doorknob. He glanced back at Chloe, whispering, “Unlocked” before flinging it open and stepping into the apartment, leading with his gun. An instant later, he relaxed and lowered the weapon.

“Daniel.” Chloe recognized Maze’s voice and relief flowered through her immediately. She moved forward and pushed Dan aside so she could enter the apartment, too. Maze’s sharp eyes took Chloe in, locking onto the bruises around Chloe’s throat, and then narrowed into hard, angry slits. “What the hell did I miss?”

“The murderer we’ve been tracking attacked me here last night,” Chloe said. “If Lucifer hadn’t been here, he would’ve killed me.”

“Lucifer was here? Is he –”

“He’s back in – in, uh…he’s gone again.” Chloe shot a look over at Dan and Trixie in the doorway, the small girl smiling up at Maze with enthusiastic worship on her face. “But he’s coming back.”

“Huh,” Maze said, glaring at the bruises on Chloe’s throat again before turning her eyes to Trixie and giving a little nod and a half smile. “Hey, little human.”

“Hi, Maze! I’m glad you’re back. I’m staying with Mommy next week so we can have special time before the baby arrives. Will you be here to have special time, too?”

Maze’s eyes narrowed and she cast another look at Chloe. “Yeah, I’m gonna be having special time with you. And maybe we’ll have a visitor and I can have some _really_ special time with him.” Chloe did not miss Maze’s hand grazing lovingly over a knife tucked into a sheath on her thigh, and shook her head. Well, at least she wouldn’t be alone now.

“All right, I’m going to bed,” Chloe said and turned away from the demon standing in the living room to face her daughter standing in the front door. “Give me a hug, Monkey; you and Daddy need to get going.”

As soon as Dan and Trixie shut the door behind them, Maze was right beside Chloe, intense and furious. “Tell me everything, Decker. I can find him right now and take care of the problem.”

“No, Maze. The police are looking for him, okay? We’re handling this.”

“Looks more like _he’s_ handling _you_. What if Lucifer hadn’t been here, huh? You just said you almost died. If you’d died, your baby would’ve died, too. Tell me what I need to know so I don’t have to go steal it from the police station. It will go a lot faster if you help.”

“ _Maze,_ ” Chloe said, sharply, turning to glare at the demon. “The police _are_ handling it. And now that you’re home, if he tries to get to me again here, you’ll be able to handle it then, okay?”

Maze seem mollified, pulling the knife from the sheath at her thigh to play with it idly.

“Okay. I was up most of the night dealing with the attack and the aftermath, and then the baby shower happened today, and I am exhausted. I’m going to bed. I will see you in the morning.”

“Gotcha. I think I’ll sleep on the couch,” Maze said, flipping her knife into the air in a sparkle of silver and catching it by the handle without missing a beat. “Just in case.”

“Whatever makes you comfortable,” Chloe said, admitting privately that it would definitely make _her_ a lot more comfortable to know the demon was in the living room if Jon Carlson tried to break in again.

She grabbed her phone charger from the kitchen and carried it to her room, plugging her cell phone in to charge and making sure the safe next to her bed was unlocked and ammo was right next to her weapon inside the safe before she fell into bed, the sounds of her soft snores filling the room minutes later.

* * * * *

Chloe spent the next day lazing around the apartment, catching a nap in the early afternoon when she realized she didn’t have any pressing reason to _not_ try to catch up on some of the sleep she’d missed recently. She expected Lucifer to show up at any moment, but the day passed without any sign of him.

Dan dropped Trixie off shortly before dinnertime, double-checking that Maze was going to be around for the next few days and letting Chloe know that he’d assigned a uni to drop by a few times a day to make sure everything was okay. As annoying as it was, Chloe understood the need. 

Although a detailed APB had been put out on Jon Carlson, he was managing to stay under the radar. Considering how much money he would have inevitably made from the illegal sale of the stolen babies, he could’ve easily skipped the country by now. The idea made Chloe want to scream; he _needed_ to be caught. Dan had started combing through all the rejected couples in Connor Bradshaw’s files, but it would take a long time to check every single one and verify that any of them who now had babies had obtained them illegally rather than through a different, legitimate adoption organization.

Once the dinner dishes were cleaned up, Chloe found Maze and Trixie in the living room, cleaning some of the various stabbing weapons Maze had collected throughout her years on Earth. Chloe fought back the urge to immediately remove Trixie from the area. After all, Maze had taught the girl the proper way to clean the blades, and Trixie had proven herself to be remarkably careful when it came to helping Maze with her weapons. Plus, cleaning bladed weapons was less destructive than some of the other things the two of them could’ve been doing.

Chloe rubbed a twinging muscle in her abdomen, thoroughly tired of the weird aches and pains of late pregnancy. Whoever said pregnancy was beautiful had obviously never been eight months pregnant.  
Chloe was settling down on the couch to rest and hang out when she thought she saw movement through the front windows of the apartment. She jerked her eyes over, but there was nothing to see. She hesitated a moment, wondering if she should check it out, but it could’ve been someone passing by on their way to their own apartment or even the uni peeking through the windows to make sure everything was okay, although it made more sense for an officer to knock and verify.

It didn’t matter; Chloe wasn’t alone. Chloe wasn’t _going_ to be alone. Maze had decided not to take any more bounties until the baby had arrived; she was on guard duty for now. Chloe would be safe at home. She would be safe at the station. Jon had no chance of getting to her again.

Chloe relaxed into the couch, smiling as Trixie carefully handed a double-bladed knife to Maze who checked it over before placing it onto the pile of polished weapons.

* * * * *

It took three weeks for Lucifer to show up again. Chloe had been printing off the last paperwork she needed to leave behind on the active cases she’d been helping with. She was at 37 weeks now, and officially on leave until the new baby was eight weeks old. She’d be using up a lot of banked vacation time for this, but it would be worth it.

She gathered the last of the pages as the printer spit them out and heard the joyful hail of “Detective!” from behind her. She turned, already smiling, and felt the smile grow larger as Lucifer’s expression went from cheerful to shocked.

“You’ve…expanded. How on Earth did you get even _bigger?_ ” he asked, standing back and looking unsure of himself. 

“Oh, my God!” Ella came rushing from her lab, her dark ponytail swinging in her enthusiasm. “It’s been _months_ , buddy! Bring it in!”

“Oh, wait – I –” Lucifer began, but he was enfolded in the arms of the ecstatic forensic scientist before he could stop the process. He carefully wrapped his arms around her, giving a few perfunctory pats to her back before she released him.

“Are you here to pick up Chloe?” Ella asked, stepping back with a big smile and propping her hands on her hips.

“Oh. Uh…”

“I’m leaving work for maternity leave today,” Chloe explained, taking pity on the poor confused archangel. “Today is officially my last day at work for the next few months.”

“Then you’ve caught the miscreant who was hunting mothers down?” Lucifer asked eagerly.

“Ah. No. We’re still working on that one,” Chloe explained, straightening the printouts in her hands as she looked away from him, feeling a little embarrassed.

“Detective, I must object. If he hasn’t been found yet, then there’s every likelihood that he’ll come after _you_ again. Leaving the case unsolved to go on vacation doesn’t seem –”

“Whoa!” Chloe protested, holding one hand up to stop him. “I am _not_ going on vacation! Lucifer, _look_ at me! I can barely fit behind my desk, let alone go chasing after a criminal. I’ve reached the point in this pregnancy where I will be better off staying home and preparing the apartment for the baby who could be here any time between now and four weeks from now.”

Lucifer’s eyebrows shot towards his hairline and he looked down at her huge abdomen once more. 

“So soon?” he asked, taking a small, disconcerted step backwards.

“Time flies, huh?” Ella asked, reaching out to lightly punch Lucifer on the arm. “Hey, Chloe, I have to get back to work, but remember to call me once she’s here, okay? I mean it. I do _not_ want to hear this through the grapevine. I promised to bring you dinner and take a turn walking her in circles around the living room so you can shower and get a nap.”

“I promise,” Chloe said, smiling. “Thank you again.”

“Hey, I’ve got you,” Ella said, backing towards her lab and shooting a finger gun towards Chloe. 

Chloe waddled – absolutely waddled, nothing else could describe it – towards her desk, putting the printouts into the correct folder and neatening everything up. She gathered her purse and her phone and sighed, taking one last look around her area to make sure she wasn’t forgetting anything. Lucifer hovered nearby, his expression still disconcerted.

“Lucifer, what’s wrong? I didn’t expect you to look so…” Chloe hesitated, trying to find the right word.

“I just didn’t anticipate…” He trailed off before gesturing at her greatly expanded abdomen. “To be quite honest, I thought you had reached maximum size the last time I was here.”

Chloe gave a short bark of laughter, heading towards the exit of the building. “Yeah, don’t I wish. Sorry, Lucifer, but the end of pregnancy usually isn’t pretty. The only plus side of it is that I get a sweet new baby once this is all over.”

“Not a strong plus, I’d say,” Lucifer murmured, and Chloe shot him a narrow-eyed look as she waited for the elevator to arrive to take her down to the parking garage.

“Lucifer, if you’re reconsidering, you know you don’t have to be involved, right? I know that babies aren’t your thing and that you never asked to be a father. I won’t even ask you to meet your daughter if you aren’t comfortable with it. But I’m going to be 100% mom for the next few months, so you need to come to grips with that reality. I won’t be coming to the precinct. I won’t be coming to your penthouse to have a drink. I’ll be at my apartment with the baby and Trixie.”

“Calm down, Detective,” Lucifer said, following her into the elevator once it arrived and giving his cuffs a couple of quick, neatening tugs as he pasted a quick smile onto his face. “I understood the changes that would be taking place in our lives long before you laid it out quite so angrily.”

“I’m not angry!” Chloe protested in a near shout, and Lucifer pressed his lips together, giving her an admonishing look. “Okay, fine. I’m a _little_ angry. It feels like you’re expecting me to still be the same woman I was before all of this. But, Lucifer, I can’t go flitting off and leaving a newborn behind just to have drinks or spend the night.”

“I’m quite aware,” he assured her. “And, no, I will not be staying away. While I’ll admit that children aren’t high on my list of desires, I have found I am somewhat curious to meet _this_ particular child.”

“Hmm,” Chloe said, sounding vaguely pleased. “Well, she won’t be a child for awhile, you know. She’ll be a baby for a few years.”

“Yes, I know,” Lucifer said, sounding unhappy about it. “I suppose we’ll muddle through somehow.”

Chloe snorted, shooting him a quick, smirking glance. “Yeah, I guess we will.”

The elevator slid open and Chloe stepped into the heat of the parking garage just as a ripple of pain squeezed across her abdomen. She stopped, sucking in a sharp breath and pressing one hand to her belly, the other braced against the parking garage wall. Lucifer was at her side instantly, hovering over her protectively with his hands resting very lightly on her shoulders but not trying to turn her towards him.

“What is it? Detective?”

“It’s just Braxton-Hicks,” Chloe said breathlessly, fighting to breathe through the pain. “Normal. Like…practice labor.”

“Labor?” Lucifer repeated, alarmed.

“ _Practice_ labor,” Chloe quickly corrected. The pain was already letting up, and she stood up straight again. “I’ve been having them for about a week now. My obstetrician says it’s normal, especially this late in the pregnancy and especially for second-time moms.”

“Can you drive when these…these…practice labor pains are happening?”

“Of course,” Chloe said. “Although if they happen often enough, I pull over and drink some water until they calm down.”

Lucifer didn’t look mollified. “You’ve had to _pull over_ before because of them? Perhaps I should drive you home –”

“No!” Chloe said quickly, turning to face him. He was following directly behind her, and only some fancy footwork on his part kept him from bumping into her protruding belly. “I can drive myself home. If you want to come to the apartment, I’ll be happy to have you over. Maze is there right now…has been for the last three weeks. She’s sort of become my watch dog.”

“Good old Maze,” Lucifer purred, a proud smile lifting the corners of his mouth as he leaned back slightly. 

“But I’m driving myself home, okay?”

Lucifer hesitated before finally sighing. “Stubborn. All right. I’ll be there shortly.”

He leaned in, dropping the briefest of kisses to Chloe’s lips before hurrying across the dark underground parking garage. Chloe felt a flutter of surprise. He had kissed her like they were a long-established couple, the quick and reassuring kiss that passes frequently between those who’ve been together for a long time and know their place is together. She had expected something more intense, more needy, especially after how long they’d been apart. This soft, brief brush of his lips had been oddly comforting.

Another sharp prick of pain assaulted her, and Chloe sucked in another breath, leaning once again against the parking garage wall. It felt like another intense round of Braxton-Hicks contractions was coming in. She’d had some the evening before that had almost had her calling labor and delivery at the hospital. The pains had come regularly, growing in intensity for an hour, before they suddenly stopped in time for her to go to bed just a little later than normal. She’d written them off as another round of practice labor, but now they were back. Chloe groaned softly, the sound deep in her throat. Yeah, they were back, all right, and they’d brought their big brothers with them.

Once the contraction let up, Chloe pushed away from the wall and hurried towards her car. She wanted to get home, put her feet up, and drink some water. Her doctor had encouraged that as a sure-fire way to calm down practice labor, and it sounded great to her right now.

Chloe wove awkwardly through the cars in the lot until she finally made it to her own vehicle, unlocking it as yet _another_ wave of tightness tingled across her abdomen, the muscles squeezing until she groaned in pain again. She leaned against the driver’s side door, breathing slowly and waiting for the cramping to ease. Talk about bad timing; driving home was going to be a no-go if this kept up, and the last thing she needed was to leave Lucifer waiting at her apartment getting more and more frantic the longer it took her to arrive. Stupid Braxton-Hicks.

The feel of a knife pressing against the side of her abdomen was shocking enough to pull her right out of her thoughts.

“No sudden moves, no shouting. You’re gonna open the door and slide in. I know it’s going to be awkward, but I want you to slide all the way across into the passenger seat, Detective Decker.”

Chloe knew that voice. She took a deep breath, following Jon Carlson’s instructions exactly. It was, indeed, awkward to slide her heavily pregnant body across the front seat. She had to hunch herself into some truly pretzel-like shapes to get past the equipment in the center and into the passenger seat, but Jon was right there with her the whole time, the knife sliding from her abdomen to her low back as she moved.

“Good,” he said, climbing into the driver’s seat. The knife stayed against her side, the point pressing ever-so-slightly into her skin through her shirt. “All right. I want you to get your gun out, and put it right here in the center so I can get it. No fast moves, or I’ll drive this into your belly and leave you here to bleed out while your baby dies inside you, okay, Detective? It’ll be a huge waste of money, cuz I already have a couple waiting for this baby…but I’ll do it if you make me. Go ahead and get your gun for me now.”

Chloe’s hands were shaking. Every time she moved, the knife pricked against her, a reminder of how easy it would be for him to stab it into her. It didn’t take that much pressure to break through human skin and drive through the fat and muscle beneath. She carefully removed her weapon, setting in on top of some of the equipment in the center console of the car before taking her hands away, keeping them held out low over her lap, hovering above her thighs, as non-threatening as she could make them.

Jon reached around awkwardly with his left hand to grab the gun, putting it in the map pocket on the driver’s side door. The movement made the knife point press a little harder into her side, and Chloe hissed in a pained breath.  
“Oops. Drew a little blood that time,” Jon said with a small laugh. “Better be more careful, huh? I don’t want to ruin my investment if I don’t have to.”

“You don’t have to do this,” Chloe said, her voice shaking. “It’s not too late to do the right thing, Jon. You can turn yourself in, help us find the babies that you took from their mothers.”

“I could,” Jon agreed. “Or I could take that baby out of you and sell it for a whole bunch of money before I get the hell out of the US. I almost have enough saved up now that I’ll be comfortable wherever I go.”

Chloe realized that if she didn’t do something _now_ , she might not have a chance to do something at all. She took a breath, tensing…and another ripple of tightening muscles swept over her belly. She gripped the arm rest on the passenger side door holding her breath as a more intense wave of agony swept over her, blinding her to everything but the pain inside of her.

As she slowly came out of it, she became aware that the car’s engine was idling softly and Jon was looking at her with a big smile. “Man, I may not have to take the baby out of you after all! I can just wait a little while and you’ll _give_ it to me. This is perfect. Do you have any idea how many weeks I’ve been hiding around here, waiting for you to come out to your car when there weren’t any other cops around? And then, when you do it, you’re in labor! It’s _perfect!_ ”

Chloe wanted to argue with him, but she had been through labor once before. While it was true that Trixie hadn’t come until after 40 weeks, once Chloe had gone into labor, it had been shockingly fast for a first-time mom. She remembered the sharp build of her labor pains, the intensity growing from contraction to contraction until she was having trouble breathing through them. This felt like the same process, definitely not the same as the practice labor the night before which had come in a pattern but not this fast and not this intense.

“Now, I’m gonna drive, and I want you to stay nice and calm, okay? We’re going to go somewhere private. Don’t try anything, Detective Decker. It’s not hard to stab someone, even while driving. And you won’t get far, even if you do manage to get out of the car somehow.”

Chloe’s face twisted in fury, but she couldn’t argue. He was right, damn him. He was right.


	15. Chapter 15

Lucifer stepped into Chloe and Maze’s apartment with a little bounce in his step, a faint smile tugging at the corners of his mouth as he pushed the front door shut behind him, his eyes sweeping the familiar kitchen and living room for his Detective. Everything was going perfectly, all things considered. Things in Hell were as calm as could be, the demons having once again accepted their place as the ruled rather than the ones ruling. The guilty were torturing themselves and the less-guilty-but-definitely-deserving were being tortured. 

The only hiccup had come when he’d first seen Chloe and stumbled a bit. He had expected her to have grown further in the pregnancy since the last time he’d been there; after all, the only constant since she’d gotten pregnant had been her expanding belly. However, he hadn’t expected it to be so… _much_. She’d looked like she was smuggling the nose of a B-52 bomber under her shirt.

The surprise had definitely made him a little less politic when he’d greeted her, but he felt like things had ended strongly. She hadn’t protested the cautious kiss he’d offered her – had, in fact, returned it. If he could just avoid any more awkward missteps, perhaps things could get back to normal again.

Obviously, he couldn’t spend the next five years on Earth without making any returns to Hell…but there was nothing compelling him to spend the next five years in _Hell_ , either. He would find a way to balance things. He could do this.

“Detective?” he called, moving towards the stairs that led upstairs to Chloe’s small bedroom and bathroom. 

“She’s not off work yet,” Maze called back, coming out of her bedroom. “Which works out great for me. How’s home, you asshole?”

Lucifer froze for a moment before sighing. “All right, yes, I suppose I deserve that –”

“You _suppose?_ ” Maze asked, stalking towards him with slow, furious steps. “You _left me_ , Lucifer. I’ve been stuck here for the last _nine months!_ What did you think I was going to do here?”

“You seemed to’ve built up a life here, Mazikeen. I thought you’d be _more_ upset if I dragged you with me than if I’d left you here. I had to make the decision to leave rather quickly, you know.”

“Yeah, I get it. But don’t you think it would’ve been good to at least _try_ to find me before you took off?” 

Lucifer wanted to argue, to defend himself…but the reality was, he had used Maze poorly. She’d come to Earth with him, been as loyal as a demon could be expected to be for the years that she’d been here as his protector, and he had repaid that loyalty by abandoning her on a foreign plane.

“I…apologize,” he said, the words pulling free from him with difficulty. “You are…right.”

Maze’s mouth shut abruptly and her eyebrows went up in surprise. She stared at him for a moment, obviously nonplussed, before finally saying, “Okay. Yes, I am. Thank you.”

“Where’s the Detective?” he asked, quickly changing the topic. Maze seemed willing to let the awkwardness of the moment die and jumped on the new conversational bid.

“Not home yet, I just said. She said she’d be coming home a little early today, but I don’t think she’s heading back yet. You could try going to the precinct –”

“I was just there,” he said. “I caught her when she was leaving. I should think she’d be back by now…of course, she does tend to obey all those annoying little traffic laws.”

“Exactly. Give her a chance to get back.” Maze cocked a hip, crossing her arms over her chest and thrusting her chin out angrily as she glared at Lucifer. “Speaking of ‘getting back,’ when are you planning to go back to Hell?” 

Lucifer sighed softly. “Truth be told, Maze, I’d much rather not go back at all. Obviously, that isn't going to work, though, so I’ll be trying to make trips every month or so. Think of it as traveling for work.” He smiled briefly, the expression more defeated than amused.

“Okay. Well…let me know the next time you're planning to hop down. I’d like to catch up with a few old friends.” A smirk touched her face as her gaze became distant and thoughtful. “And a few older enemies.”

Lucifer gave a scoffing laugh, moving past Maze towards the kitchen. “You might have some trouble finding a few individuals. Part of why I've had so much trouble returning here was because of Dromos –” 

“That idiot again?” Maze cut in, following Lucifer into the kitchen with quick, angry steps. “I've had it; I'm going to cut his head off and –”

“No need, my vicious little aichmomaniac,” Lucifer said cheerfully. “I destroyed him after he led an uprising against me. He and several thousand of his closest followers are no longer residing in Hell.”

Maze frowned, leaning forward to rest her forearms on the kitchen counter. “You take all the fun jobs.”

“Yes, well, after being buried under a literal _mountain_ of demons for several weeks, I had precious little patience left for sorting out the best way to discourage future attempts at dethroning me. However, assuming anyone you loathe is left, you've my blessing to torture them to your heart’s content once you're back in Hell.”

“Good,” Maze positively chirped. She hesitated for a moment, pulling her lips into her mouth and gently chewing at them, and then added, “But…you won’t _leave_ me there, right? I mean, you were kind of right about me having a life on Earth now. I don't mind a visit home, but I don't want to _stay_ there anymore.”

Lucifer chuckled, tucking his hands into the pockets of his trousers. “I don't blame you at all. Honestly, there are far more enjoyable things in this plane than even the sainted Silver City.”

“I don't find that hard to believe at all,” Maze said. “Alcohol, sex, violent criminals that need to be violently put down –”

“Mmm, yes, speaking of criminals, shouldn't the Detective have made it back by now? It's been nearly a half hour since I left the precinct.”

Maze shrugged, inspecting the polish on one nail. “Maybe she stopped to get something from the store? Call her.”

“Yes, of course,” Lucifer said, and he pulled his cell phone from an inside pocket of his bespoke suit jacket and began scrolling quickly to his Detective's number.

* * * * *

The high-pitched trilling of Chloe’s phone made Jon Carlson jump, the knife jabbing deeper into her side and drawing a sharp sound of protest from Chloe’s throat. He pulled the knife back quickly before replacing it at her side with a little self-deprecating laugh.

“Didn’t expect that. I should have, though, huh?” He gave Chloe a little friendly smile, as if he wasn’t holding her at knife-point in her own car, planning to kill her and steal her baby. “You should get rid of that phone, so no one tracks us. Go ahead and get it out – slowly.”

Chloe leaned down carefully, fishing in her purse for the phone. She saw Lucifer’s name on the lock screen as the phone trilled again insistently. 

“Come on, Detective Decker, let’s get that out of the car,” Jon encouraged her. Chloe realized she only had a second to get a warning out, so she quickly groaned softly, raising her left hand to press against her belly, faking a contraction for all she was worth as she quickly thumbed a text in to Lucifer. Just three letters: she didn’t have time for anything else.

_Jon._

She hit Send, turned the screen off, and sat up, breathing heavily. She gave Jon a dark look before rolling down her window and tossing the phone out. There went any chance anyone had of tracking her. She had to hope that Lucifer had some devilish tricks up his sleeve that would help him locate her, otherwise she would be dead and their baby would be lost forever.

“Man, those are coming closer and closer together, huh?” Jon commented, sounding pleased. “Good thing we’re pretty close to where I’ve been staying. I’d hate to have to watch you have the baby here in the front seat of the car. It would be like one of those viral videos. I hate those.”

Chloe wanted to say something scathing, something that would put this idiot in his place, but her next real contraction was tightening the muscles across her huge belly, tingling and burning as they pulled tighter and tighter, the uterus beneath them doing likewise. She groaned, clenching her hands into fists and pounding rhythmically against her thighs as she closed her eyes, forcing slow, even breaths as the pain radiated through her, the intensity easily double what she’d experienced in the parking garage.

Not much time left.

* * * * *

“She hung up on me,” Lucifer said, pulling his phone away from his face with an expression that hovered between confused and offended.

“Hah!” Maze said, walking around the counter to look at his phone screen. “Maybe she’s still in traffic? She wouldn’t want to be on the phone then, right?”

“She has a Bluetooth,” Lucifer said. “She answers her phone quite regularly when she’s –”

He cut off as the cellular vibrated with an incoming text. It was from Chloe, and it was a single word: _Jon._

“What does that mean?” Maze asked, tilting her head to stare at the screen.

Lucifer felt ice flow through him, chilling him from his chest outward, until he felt like he’d been carved from a single huge block of the stuff. Within seconds, the ice melted into a hot fury and he could feel his eyes ignite, the red light of his anger reflecting off the screen of his phone as he stared down at it.

“Jon Carlson,” he snarled, his fist clenching tight around the phone, making the plastic casing creak warningly. “The reprobate who’s been killing women and stealing their infants.”

“Call her again. She needs to explain,” Maze said, her voice suddenly tense.

Lucifer was already pressing Call. The phone rang and rang before finally going to voicemail.

“She’s not answering,” he said as he lowered the phone to the cabinet top before him, trying to keep his voice steady. He wanted to rush from the door and straight to her side, but he didn’t know where she _was_. Moving right now would only lead to him running in useless, idiotic circles.

“Did she hang up on you again?” Maze asked.

“Went to voicemail.”

“Okay. Okay. Hang on.” Maze hurried into her bedroom, coming back out with her own cellphone in her hands, her fingers sliding over the screen in a flurry of motions. “I turned the tracker on in her phone weeks ago so I could know where she was.”

“Why didn’t you say that when I _first got here?_ ” Lucifer didn’t even try to keep the deep fury out of his voice as he advanced on the demon, not sure what he was going to do when he reached her but fairly certain it wasn’t advisable in his current state of upset.

“Got her!” Maze said, stopping his forward advance instantly. “She’s moving, but we can catch up if we hurry. Let’s go.”

“I’m driving,” Lucifer said, needing something he could control. Maze didn’t argue, and they rushed from the apartment, following the blinking dot on the map on Maze’s cellphone.

* * * * *

“All right, you have to walk now, Detective Decker. Don’t try to run or anything; I’ve got your gun.”

Chloe looked over, her brain trying to understand what was happening. The car had stopped during her last contraction, she realized. She had been distantly aware of it, but had somewhat stopped processing what was happening outside her own body. 

The contractions were incredible, and she’d taken to vocalizing low, hopeless moans each time one overtook her. In between them, she rested in a kind of vacant, dazed misery. She was fairly certain she was getting close to the end of labor. She’d been rereading the books Linda had loaned her about labor and birth, and could recognize that everything was coming to a head: contractions were stronger, lasting longer, and coming closer and closer together while her brain spaced out. Her body was very quickly moving towards the pushing stage. 

She hoped Lucifer had understood her message, but knew that it was much more likely that she was about to die.

“Detective Decker. Focus. Open your door and slide out. No fast moves, okay? I _will_ shoot.” Jon Carlson gave a little push with the knife against her side, opening another small slice in her skin to join the one he’d put there when her phone had rung while they’d been driving.

Chloe gripped the door handle, opening the door and slowly rotating her body, placing one foot and then the other on the ground. She slid her way out and could hear Jon crawling across the seats behind her. He didn’t wait for her to clear the way but shoved against her back, making her stumble forward a few steps as he got out of the car. 

“See the big building right ahead? With the boarded-up windows? We’re gonna go around the left side of it; I have a door I’ve kicked open. Let’s go, Detective Decker.”

Chloe started forward then stopped as the next contraction hit, pulling tighter and tighter.

There was a pop from low down inside her abdomen, and Chloe felt wetness explode down her inner thighs, pooling inside her shoes warmly. 

“No!” The single word tore from her, all of her sorrow and hopelessness packed into the single syllable as her water broke. Trixie had been born within thirty minutes of her water breaking. Time was up.

“Oh, wow, that’s pretty gross,” Jon commented, sounding fascinated. “Man, that went all over the place. Glad I wasn’t any closer! You could’ve gotten my shoes, too. All right, come on, hurry up. We don’t need to draw any crackheads over, huh?”

The knife jabbed into her lower back, and Chloe felt yet another cut opening in her skin. She stumbled forward, the contraction ebbing. Jon kept jabbing at her to keep her moving, some barely touching her but others opening tiny pinpricks and cuts in her lower back. At any other time, the pain of multiple cuts would’ve been occupying her full attention. Right now, though, the pain of those cuts couldn’t hold a tithe to the intensity of the labor pains.

She followed Jon’s verbal instructions to a pockmarked metal door with a large sheet of plywood in front of it, and was unsurprised when he took hold of the wood panel and moved it away from the door with no real effort. It hadn’t been nailed in place, just leaned up against the door. At his order, she took hold of the handle and opened the door, stepping into the darkness within.

He was blocking the doorway with his body, cutting the outside light off from the interior, when the next contraction hit. Without the cushion of the amniotic fluid to soften the muscular contractions, the pain was tripled and Chloe could not stop the high-pitched sounds of agony that tore out of her. She leaned forward over her thighs, fists clenched, teeth clenched, entire body clenched as the white-hot pain tore through her in a wave that went higher and higher before it finally crested and flowed away, leaving her shaking in its wake.

“Better move quick,” Jon muttered, almost as if speaking to himself, and Chloe followed his muttered orders, moving through the dark interior of the building towards a distant light. She guessed the building had once been some kind of processing or packing plant: the interior was wide and open, the sounds of their steps echoing into the unseen distance. There didn’t seem to be anything left inside except a distant electric camp lamp near a sleeping bag and a few paper grocery sacks. 

She was almost at the sleeping bag when the next contraction hit and she doubled over again, fists on her knees, the same keening sound of agony tearing from her in waves as she panted through the pain. Jon stood back, watching her. He had her police weapon in one hand, his knife in the other, and seemed content to just stand back. What else did he need to do, after all? Nature had taken control now.

* * * * *

“Here!” Maze said, and Lucifer jerked the wheel to one side, the tires hitting the curb as he parked illegally in the lane. The car immediately behind them blared its horn before jerking angrily into the other lane to go around the suddenly stopped Corvette. Lucifer didn’t even bother glancing over at the furious human; he didn’t have time for that right now.

“Where? She’s not _here_ ,” he barked, climbing out the car and almost spinning in place as he took in the street. They were in one of more rundown parts of LA, the streets littered and the sidewalks cracked. The few people within sight looked tired, strung-out, and suspicious. These were not the climes in which one would expect a heavily pregnant woman to be wandering.

Maze was out of the car, too, her eyes scanning the ground around them with sharp intensity. There was sparse vegetation, the verges mostly dirt, rocks, and discarded needles. There was an abandoned shopping cart lying on its side a little further up the road, but it was empty and obviously did not contain one female police detective. 

Maze ran forward abruptly, leaning to scoop a small object out of the dry gutter. She held it up as Lucifer stalked over, and he recognized Chloe’s cell phone. He snarled, exposing his teeth as he spun, scanning the area again as if he expected to see Chloe standing somewhere nearby.

“She must’ve ditched it. She wouldn’t have done that unless she had to,” Maze said.

“He has her. He came after her again.” Lucifer knew, as soon as he spoke the words, that he was going to commit murder. Whether they found Chloe alive or not, it didn’t matter. He had spent millennia refusing to kill, murder anathema to his very being. But after so recently destroying thousands of demons, he now thought it might not be that hard to kill one of his Father’s so-adored humans, especially one who had taken his Detective.

Maze swore, angrily throwing the Detective’s phone into the front seat of the Corvette.

Lucifer turned helplessly in a circle, not knowing what to do next. A dead end. A bloody _dead end_ and Chloe was somewhere out there with a man who’d already tried to kill her once.

“All right, Dad,” he whispered, bringing his hands together in front of his breastbone in a prayer position, a grimace of disgust on his face. “You know how much I hate to do this, but I…I need some guidance. So, if you have some kind of celestial GPS – ”

“GPS!” Maze shouted, startling him into dropping his hands.

“What?”

“You reminded me! You know I like having backup plans to my backup plans, right?”

“What _are_ you babbling about?” he asked, fighting the urge to violently lay waste to the already-trashed and decrepit street. 

“I wanted to be able to find Chloe even if she didn’t have her phone,” Maze said, tapping through several screens on her cell. “So, I put a GPS tracker in those hideous flat shoes she’s been wearing non-stop for the last few months.”

Lucifer felt his fury ebbing as hope rose to take its place. He stepped closer to Maze, looking over her shoulder as she opened a different app on her phone, another map appearing on the screen. 

“She’s close,” Maze said. “Maybe only five minutes away.”

“Get in,” Lucifer said, already flinging himself into the driver’s seat. Maze was barely in when he peeled out, not bothering with a seatbelt or a signal. He didn’t have time for that right now. They were _close_.

* * * * *

Chloe was on her hands and knees, breathing hard as her most recent contraction eased. Jon was standing back, gun and knife dangling as he watched her with a kind of bored patience that made her wish she had the energy to get up and kick him in the balls.

The echoing silence in the huge, dark building was oppressive. With the only light coming from the tiny electric camp lantern, Chloe could really only see what was directly around her: the sleeping bag, the grocery sacks, her own shaking hands, and Jon standing at the edge of the ring of light. 

Chloe sat up with difficulty, resting her hands on her thighs as she sat back on her heels, breathing deeply as she tried to find the energy to keep going. As soon as it became obvious that the contraction was over, Jon’s eyes sharpened on her again and he raised the gun to point at her. 

“Shouldn’t you be almost done? Movies don’t make it look like it takes so long,” Jon complained.

Chloe just glared at him in silent, exhausted disgust.

“I’m starting to think maybe I _should_ just cut the baby out and get out of here,” Jon said, taking a single step forward and raising the knife threateningly. Chloe shuffled awkwardly away from him on her knees, still sitting with her legs folded beneath her. 

“If you try, I will _kill_ you,” she snarled, and Jon barked out a little laugh, shaking his head.

“I’d like to see that,” he said, wiggling the gun in her general direction.

“Granted.”

The dark, purring voice came out of the far blackness of the huge empty building, and Chloe recognized it instantly, a thrill running through her.

“Lucifer!” she gasped, and Jon was spinning with the gun rising to point into the blackness.

“Who’s there?” he shouted, the gun jerking back and forth as he tried to see who’d spoken in the lightless vastness beyond them. He couldn’t react fast enough to stop the shape that hurtled from out of the shadows, knocking the gun from his hand. It clattered loudly as it tumbled end over end across the cement floor. Chloe had only seen the briefest glimpse, but the flying hair had been a dead giveaway: Maze was here with Lucifer.

She felt the smile beginning to tug up the corners of her mouth when the next contraction washed over her, forcing her focus back to the inevitable birth rushing down on her like a tidal wave. She groaned, the deep sound filling the space around them, echoing back at her from the distant walls. She was only vaguely aware of the sounds of punches landing, the knife hitting the floor, Jon crying out as Maze did something painful to him. 

Hands were on her back, gentle and warm, not trying to force her to sit up but simply supporting her. 

“Detective?” Lucifer’s voice was so soft, but Chloe couldn’t respond. Her hands were planted on the hard cement in front of her, her fingers hooked and nails scratching absently over and over as she rode out the pain. 

Suddenly, without Chloe planning it, her body bore down, pushing. She made a harsh, guttural, animal sound, and she could hear Lucifer’s voice dimly as he asked questions she couldn’t answer. She sucked in breaths as hard and fast as she could, each one exhaling on another animal grunt as she pushed without meaning to.

As she came out of the pushing contraction, she could hear blows landing in quick succession. She raised her head to look around, knowing she would not have much time. Maze was a dim shape just beyond the light, sitting on top of another lump that was not responding to her punches.

“Maze,” Chloe rasped. “Stop. You…can’t kill him. We still need to find…all the babies.”

“Fine,” Maze said, sounding like she meant the exact opposite of the word. “What should we be doing, then?”

“Call Dan. Call an ambulance for me. They won’t make it…in time.” As if to prove the point, the next wave of heavy cramping came and Chloe was pushing again, groaning heavily and deeply as her body worked to bring her baby into the world. 

Lucifer was at a loss as he had never been before. This was so far outside of his realm of experience that he didn’t even have the knowledge to know the breadth of what he didn’t know. He looked helplessly at Maze, and she stared back with a furrowed brow.

“I’ll call,” she said, digging her phone out of her pocket without actually getting off of the unconscious man who had been holding his Detective at gunpoint. “You…do whatever you can.”

“Oh, helpful,” he muttered, lowering himself to his knees to stroke one hand uncomfortably across the plane of Chloe’s back as she made sounds that would have fit perfectly in the dim corridors of Hell.

“Pants,” Chloe said, reaching back with one hand to paw at the stretchy black maternity pants she wore. 

“Not how I imagined I’d be taking your pants off of you, Detective,” Lucifer said, forcing a lighthearted smile that he did not feel at all like giving. He peeled them away from her skin and down her legs carefully, alarmed to find them soaked in some kind of fluid. It didn’t leave his hands red, so at least it wasn’t blood. He didn’t have time to ask before Chloe was making the sounds again, one hand reaching blindly towards him from her all fours position on the floor. 

He abandoned the task of removing her pants, leaving them around her calves as he shuffled on his knees, ruining his suit trousers on the rough concrete floor. He took her searching hand in his and she jerked on him, dragging him even closer. She used her grip on him to drag her body more upright, and pressed her sweating brow into his shirt, her heavy groans muffled against his belly, her arms wrapping around his waist.

Maze was murmuring on the phone, but he couldn’t give two good Dad-damns about what she was saying. He was completely focused on his Detective, who seemed to be going through something similar to acute torture. She needed him. He would give whatever he could.

Slowly, the sounds died out. Chloe remained against him, clinging and panting, her eyes shut. He had his arms threaded beneath hers and wrapped around her upper back, practically holding her up as her body seemed to give out now that whatever had caused the intense, animalistic sounds finally stopped harassing her. He stared down at her slack face, the sweat dripping down her flushed skin and little bits of hair clinging to her cheeks, and he was reminded once more how beautiful she was. He moved his hands, splayed against her back as he held her up, stroking them against her and trying to comfort her.

Her brow furrowed and he tensed as her fingers dug into him again, squeezing fistfuls of his suit coat. Another deep, pulsing groan tore from her throat and she buried her face against his belly again, the sweat on her skin dampening his shirt.

“Uh, Lucifer?” Maze sounded vaguely alarmed, and he glanced away from his contemplation of the top of his Detective’s head. 

“What?”

“Something is happening. With Chloe.”

“I can see that.”

“No, Lucifer, you _really_ can’t,” Maze said, gesturing towards Chloe with one hand and then pointing down with a rather deliberate, sharp motion. “I think you need to put something under her.”

“What? Why?”

“To catch the baby.”

Alarm spiked and Lucifer’s entire body tensed. Chloe was holding onto his coat with desperate intensity, and he couldn’t move free of her grip. He breathed faster, panic rising as he wondered if he would even have time to remove his suit jacket before the baby dropped onto the hard concrete below. But Chloe’s harsh growls and groans were dying off again and she was going limp against him once more. He struggled with removing his suit coat, holding her with one arm at a time as he shook himself free of the coat and tossed it behind her, twisting sideways as he tried to thread it through her thighs on top of the stretchy maternity pants he’d never managed to get off of her. 

“You know, you _could_ come and help, Mazikeen,” he snarled, and she snorted out a laugh as she rose up off the unconscious man.

“Yeah, but I’m kind of enjoying watching you struggle.”

He glared at her silently and she crouched, reaching out to adjust the suit coat as Chloe tensed once more in Lucifer’s arms, her entire body seeming to go rock hard as she sucked in a harsh breath, releasing it in a long, drawn-out, shaking groan.

“Oh, wow, I did _not_ need a front-row seat to this,” Maze said, standing up quickly and backing away. “I mean, I’ve seen birth used for torture before, but that was on people who definitely deserved it.”

“Yes, thanks for that,” Lucifer muttered. “Very helpful.”

“I mean, she’s doing a damned good job. Way less screaming and flailing than I’m used to. She’s definitely being Chloe: getting the job done.”

Lucifer snorted a faint laugh, and then tightened his arms as Chloe once more went limp against him, trusting him to hold her up as she relaxed utterly.

“Well, if it’s any comfort, she’s almost done. Head’s out.” Maze crossed her arms, leaning slightly to one side as she peered at Chloe thoughtfully.

“Head? What head?”

“The baby’s head. Lucifer, do you know _anything_ about birth?”

“Never really made a point of adding it to my lists of expertise,” he said. “I never expected I’d _need_ to know.”

“Well, the head comes out. Then there’s a pause while it does this weird spin thing – ”

“What, like The Exorcist?” Lucifer sounded horrified, and Maze laughed.

“I wish! Nowhere near that dramatic. But the baby should pop out pretty quick after the spin.”

Lucifer was opening his mouth to reply when he felt Chloe tense against him again. He hissed a sharp breath in as her fingernails dug into his skin through his button-up shirt, her breath hot against his navel as she groaned out another heavy, pained sound that went on and on until he felt like he might break apart under the intensity of her suffering. And then she went abruptly limp, her entire body letting go instantly and hanging from his arms.

“What – is she – Chloe!” His words were disjointed and frightened, but Maze was smiling, crouching down.

“She’s here,” Maze said, her voice surprisingly soft.

“She? She who – oh.”

Chloe was letting go of him, moving with delicate, exhausted care as she reached down, dragging both the baby and Lucifer’s suit coat through her legs and lifting them up to her chest. She sat her bare butt down on the concrete with a heavy sigh, the tiny naked form in her arms making her first, gurgling protest as Chloe settled the baby against her chest.

“Hi, baby,” Chloe said, and Lucifer saw tears on her face, mingling with the sweat. He was frozen on his knees, hands hovering near his hips, half-outstretched as he wondered what he was supposed to do. The small form in Chloe’s arms was wrapped in his $3,000 suit coat, her skin slowly going from a blueish color to a more purple shade as she drew in a breath and released another gurgling cry. “I know, baby. I know. That was hard. But it’s over now. I’ve got you now.”

“You did it, Decker,” Maze said, rising to her feet. “Damned impressively, too.”

“I did, didn’t I?” Chloe asked, looking up to smile beatifically at the demon. Her eyes drifted to Lucifer, still crouched on his knees, still staring. “Do you want to meet your daughter?”

Lucifer hesitated. He wasn’t sure how he was supposed to respond to the question. He felt torn between a desire to escape and a desire to fling himself to his Detective’s side. He could feel his hands trembling as he tore in half inside.

“It’s okay,” Chloe said, tears still running down her cheeks. “I understand. I…I said you didn’t have to be a part –”

“Don’t.” He cut her off as he struggled heavily to his feet, clumsy in a way he rarely was, the sound of his Louboutins scuffing on the rough concrete floor absurdly loud in the huge, dark space around them. It felt like it took ages to cross the few inches between them, and he stood just in front of her for a long time, staring down at the dark hair crowning the tiny head poking out of the rich dove grey of his suit jacket.

“She has your hair,” Chloe said, smiling at him despite the tears still streaking down her cheeks.

He crouched down, going to his knees once more on the concrete floor of the warehouse, and Chloe tipped the baby slightly, showing her tiny, red, angry face to Lucifer. 

He raised one hand slightly and then froze, his fingers hovering bare inches from the baby’s face.

“You can touch her,” Chloe said encouragingly, and he touched the tip of his index finger to one rounded cheek very, very lightly, feeling the impossible softness of her new skin. Chloe’s voice softened gently and she looked down at the new baby. “That’s your daddy.”

“Oh,” he said, the word very faint. It was surprising that he heard the faint noise of movement beyond their tiny tableau, considering how focused his attention was. There was the softest scuff as Jon Carlson began to wake up, his shoe dragging across the concrete as he tried to right himself. 

Lucifer was on the man in an instant, his angelic face and body burned away in a flash of fury as one red, clawed hand lifted the murderous human from the floor by the front of his shirt. Lucifer's wings flung wide, eclipsing the man from Chloe's view, but she heard the panicked squeal as Jon took in the creature holding him aloft.

“No! Stop, please, I…I needed money! I needed money!” Jon babbled frantically, clawing at the front of his shirt but never venturing to touch Lucifer's skin. “I just wanted a better quality of life!”

Lucifer spun, sharp teeth bared in a snarl of fury, the man swinging by the shirt clutched in the Devil’s fist. His dark, rasping voice came out in a snarl that quickly rose to a roar. “And what about the lives of the women you killed? What about the quality of life for their _babies?_ ”

Lucifer drew back his other powerfully muscled arm, his fist striking the man’s face with such force that Jon’s head bobbled bonelessly on his neck. He was unconscious before Lucifer could draw back for a second strike, and Lucifer realized with sharp clarity why it was so very dangerous to give one as old and powerful as he was something to protect.

He dropped Jon to the cement floor again and stood over the unconscious murderer, breathing hard, as the sound of distant sirens began to grow from outside.

“Lucifer,” Chloe whispered, her voice as dry as leaves in November. “You…you have to change back. They'll be here in a second.”

He drew in a sharp, painful rasp of air, the anger in him simmering hot and murderous. He wanted to kill this human who had threatened his Detective. He wanted to rend him apart…but he wouldn't. 

He tightened down on the wrath, sucking in breaths like a runner who’d just crossed the finish line. He knew he'd managed to subdue his boiling emotions when he felt the tickle of his mussed curls against his forehead.

The door to the warehouse flung open, bright daylight pouring in, and humans began to fill the huge empty space. Lucifer backed away from the unconscious man splayed on the cement floor, keeping his eyes down on the shiny toes of his Louboutins. He did not trust himself to look at any of the arriving humans. Not yet.


	16. Chapter 16

Chloe grinned at Dan as he leaned over the baby in her arms, making soft noises of appreciation. Trixie was sitting next to Chloe on the hospital bed, also cooing at her half-sister with a look of adoration on her face.

“Man, she’s perfect,” Dan said, reaching out to gently stroke a knuckle down the side of the baby’s face. She immediately turned her tiny head, lips canting to the side as she tried to latch onto his finger. “Oh, and hungry.”

Chloe adjusted the baby, latching the tiny, searching mouth to her breast before turning her attention to Trixie, who was still watching her new sister with fascination.

“What do you think, Monkey?” Chloe asked, smiling at her older daughter.

“She’s so cute!” Trixie enthused. “I’m glad she has dark hair like me. People will know we’re sisters!”

Chloe laughed, shaking her head. “People will know that you’re sisters because of how much you’ll love each other,” she said, leaning forward to press a kiss to Trixie’s head. The baby in her arms grizzled faintly as her tenuous grip on Chloe’s breast was broken, and Chloe readjusted her until the baby was once again latched on and happily nursing.

“So, uh…where’s Lucifer?” Dan asked the question like a part of him didn’t want to voice it, and Chloe raised her eyebrows.

“He went to get different clothes. Probably needed a few drinks while he was there, after what he just went through.”

“What _he_ went through?” Dan said, disbelief plain in his face and voice. “Chloe, you were kidnapped, held at knifepoint, stabbed multiple times – two of which needed _stitches_ – and then gave birth in a derelict warehouse with no one to help you.”

“That’s not true,” Chloe said. “Lucifer and Maze helped.”

“No one who was _trained_ ,” Dan corrected himself. “But, yeah, sure, _Lucifer_ went through a lot.”

“Hey, I remember you being pretty stunned after Trixie’s birth. You fell asleep for like, four hours right after.”

Dan gave a wry laugh, looking down at his daughter with a soft expression. He ran a gentle hand down the back of her head, stroking her hair. “Yeah, that was a pretty intense experience.”

“Well, Lucifer just went through that himself, okay? Except he wasn’t in a hospital with support staff. It was just him and Maze and the man who was planning to kill me and kidnap the baby. Given how well Lucifer deals with most things, I kind of can’t blame him for needing a few drinks.”

Dan shook his head, a wry expression crossing his face. “I wouldn’t blame Lucifer for needing an entire _bar_.”

“Well, I didn’t manage an _entire_ bar,” Lucifer said, stepping into the hospital room with a jovial expression. Trixie immediately slid off the bed, rushing over to wrap her arms around his waist before he had a chance to dodge the attack of affection. He gave the top of her head an awkward pat, his smile becoming strained.

“Ah. Yes.”

“Come on, Trix,” Dan said, heading over to rescue Lucifer from the small girl clinging to his fresh suit. “We’ll come see Mommy and the new baby again tomorrow, okay?”

“All right,” Trixie said, sounding disappointed. “See you tomorrow, Mommy. Bye, Lucifer!”

With Dan and Trixie gone, Chloe looked at Lucifer with a delicately neutral expression, adjusting her arms slightly to keep them from falling asleep as she cradled the still-nursing infant. “Do you feel better?”

“Much,” Lucifer said, giving a quick tug at the hem of his suit jacket as he smiled. “Amazing what a shower and a change of clothing can do for one’s morale.” His smile faltered, and he shifted from foot to foot. “How are you, Detective?”

Chloe shook her head, looking down at the tiny person in her arms with a soft smile. “Doing really good, actually. Considering how fast the birth was, really appreciating the drugs the EMTs gave me in the ambulance.”

“Yes, quite envious of that, actually. It might have been nice to take the edge off, especially after that fleshy sack of jelly came out of you,” Lucifer said, still standing by the door of the room.

“That was the placenta. The EMTs _did_ explain that after you started shouting.”

“Yes, well…” Lucifer shifted from foot to foot, going silent.

“Lucifer? You can come over. You don't have to stay by the door.”

A sharp look of pain lanced through his eyes, gone almost before Chloe could identify it.

“And disturb this peaceful moment? Detective, I couldn't.” There was a beat of silence before he spoke again, his voice much softer. “I don't…I don't belong here.”

Chloe sucked in a single, sharp breath, alarm pinging through her. “What do you mean?”

“You've seen me, Detective, seen what I look like under…what I _really_ look like now. The monstrous _thing_ that I truly am.” Lucifer's face twisted in pain as he lowered his eyes to the infant in Chloe's arms. “The things I've done…what right do I have to even be in the same room as you both?”

“Every right, Lucifer! The things you've done, you did because you had to. You've protected me and hundreds of others –”

“And killed thousands more!” Lucifer nearly shouted.

Chloe froze as the baby at her breast made a soft complaint. Lucifer's dark eyes snapped down to her and a look of stricken regret touched his features. After a few silent seconds, though, the baby returned once more to pacifying herself with sucking and Chloe looked up to meet Lucifer's gaze again.

“What do you mean?”

“I told you what happened in Hell. There was an uprising. A group of demons sought to overthrow me. I tried…I tried to end it peacefully. But they…they kept coming.” Lucifer turned his face to the floor, and when he lifted it again, Chloe could see the shimmer of tears threatening to fall. “Thousands of them. I murdered _thousands_ of them.”

“Demons? But, Lucifer, that's different. That's not like –”

“Killing a person?” Lucifer put in. “Would you say that if I’d burned Maze alive, left nothing behind but a bed of ash to mark her death?”

Chloe's eyes went wide with horror, and Lucifer smiled humorlessly.

“There you have it, Detective. Maze is no different from the thousands of lives I took in Hell. If we're speaking purely of prolificacy, I'm much worse than the murderer who tried to end your life and steal your daughter.”

“ _Our_ daughter,” Chloe corrected instantly, and Lucifer gave a humorless laugh.

“One hopes there's nothing of me in her. I would never want to curse another living being so.”

“Lucifer, _stop_.” Chloe's voice was sharp but it cut through his tirade effectively. He closed his mouth, almost glaring at her. “Maybe you feel like a monster, but I know you and I know that you are _not_ a monster. It's tragic that you had to kill so many demons, but you just admitted there was no other way, that you'd tried everything you could before resorting to it.”

“Then why is my body still able to take on the form of the monster you saw before?” Lucifer almost snarled, thumping his palms angrily against his chest.

“I don't know!” Chloe shot back. “But I do know that it doesn't _matter_ what you look like. What matters is who you are, and you are a good man. Sure, the – the devil form is part of you. But like you've said before, it’s not _all_ of you.”

Lucifer drew in several ragged breaths, staring into Chloe's eyes without blinking. Slowly, his body relaxed, his shoulders coming down and his expression softening. Some of the heavy tension that has been blanketing the room dissipated.

“I wish I could believe it so easily,” he murmured, and Chloe shifted the baby slightly in her arms so she could hold her free hand out towards him, beckoning him closer.

“Ah,” he said uncomfortably, taking a single step back and bumping into the door to her hospital room with a hip. “I don't know if, uh…”

“Lucifer, you know you don’t _have_ to be here, right? I’m fine. She’s fine. I appreciate that you and Maze saved us, and I appreciate that you rode in the ambulance with us to the hospital, but I really didn’t expect you to come back after you left earlier.”

Lucifer’s brow furrowed. “You expected me to abandon you?”

“No,” Chloe said quickly, struggling to find a way to express herself. “Of course not. I just…I know fatherhood isn’t something you’ve ever wanted. I would understand if you –”

“We did discuss this earlier today,” Lucifer said tartly, glaring. “I thought I’d made it clear that I intend to be here for you both, even if it's against my better judgement.”

Chloe bit her lips, looking down at the tiny dozing baby in her arms. Her nipple had slid from the slack mouth of the peaceful infant, and Chloe tried not to jostle her as she worked to tuck her breast back into the hospital gown. When she looked up again, Lucifer had moved a few steps closer, his expression hesitant as he looked at the baby in Chloe’s arms, obviously trying to get a better look but not close enough to really see her well.

“Come on,” Chloe said, her voice soft. “She’s been cleaned up now; you might like her better.”

“I liked her fine before,” Lucifer muttered, but he stepped up next to the bed, leaning slightly to get a better look, his dark eyes sweeping across the small, perfect features, the fluffy dark swirls of hair that looked suspiciously like the beginnings of curls, the long-fingered hands resting just below her tiny round chin.

“So, I’ve been thinking about names,” Chloe said slowly, and Lucifer ‘hmmm’ed, only half listening. “I was thinking maybe…Dawn.”

Lucifer didn’t respond, continuing to stare down at the tiny face of the infant cuddled in Chloe’s arms.

“I thought it made sense, naming her after you.”

Lucifer finally glanced up, his brows drawing in slightly in confusion. “After me?”

“Morningstar,” Chloe explained, one corner of her mouth hitching into a half-smile. Understanding spread across Lucifer’s face as he turned his gaze back down to the baby.

“Dawn,” he said, trying the name out. “Dawn Morninstar.”

“Dawn Decker,” Chloe corrected, and Lucifer raised both eyebrows as he looked at her.

“Dawn _Decker?_ ” he repeated, incredulously. “Double-D? It’s practically a porn star name, Detective!”

Chloe burst out laughing, shaking her head. “Okay, let’s table that for now. Do you at least like the name Dawn?”

Lucifer hesitated, looking down at the sleeping baby, watching her nearly-invisible eyebrows raise and lower as she dreamed, her eyelids flickering. “Yes, Detective, I rather think I do.”

“Good. Dawn.” Chloe smiled fondly at the dreaming infant and then looked up, her voice becoming perfunctory. “So, in unrelated news, Dan told me that they’re pursuing the leads that Jon Carlson gave them to find all the stolen babies. And Carlson is going to be spending the rest of his life in jail, so he’s going to be justly punished.”

“Not nearly enough, though I will get the pleasure of taking over that punishment eventually,” Lucifer said in a dark undertone, and Chloe raised her eyebrows. He caught the look and quickly smiled, shrugging the moment off. 

“So…how long…um, when will you…how long are you going to stay this time?” Chloe asked, trying to meet his eyes but struggling with it. Lucifer settled himself gently onto the edge of the hospital bed, being careful of the IV line and monitoring wires running to Chloe.

“Things are much more stable in Hell now. I will probably only need to spend a week there every few months, just long enough to remind them who is their King.” Lucifer smiled, the expression soft. “I don’t anticipate any more lengthy sojourns to Hell. And thank goodness, because I’ve got a business to run here.”

Chloe laughed softly, stroking her hand lightly across Dawn’s dark hair. 

“So, what’s next?”

“Next?” Lucifer leaned back, bracing his elbow on the bed beside Chloe’s arm, resting gently against her side as she stroked their baby’s hair. “I think I’d like to just sit here for awhile.”

“I’m good with that,” Chloe murmured, leaning her head to the side until it rested on his shoulder, and they both sat in comfortable silence, watching Dawn sleep.

\- End -

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading! I appreciate you taking a chance on this story, and I hope you've enjoyed the ride as much as I enjoyed writing it.
> 
> I've started another Deckerstar fic, and hope to have it ready to upload sometime between Netflix's release of the first half and second half of Lucifer season 5! Keep your eyes on this account!


	17. Bonus

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bonus one-shot that adds absolutely nothing to the story! 
> 
> This is not necessary reading for the completion of the fanfic 'Dawn.' Really, unless you want a soft and squishy moment of Lucifer embracing fatherhood, then you can skip this one-shot entirely. Truly, there are no redeeming qualities in this as far as the finished fic goes; this is just for the joy of it, and the realization that I, also, wanted to see how Lucifer would behave with his infant daughter.

“Detective?” Lucifer called, stepping through the front door into her apartment without waiting for an invitation. He was always welcome, he knew; why stand on formality when what he wanted was to be inside, and waiting for an invitation would only delay the inevitable?

The inside of his Detective’s apartment had gathered a few new messes over the last six weeks: a discarded sweated over the back of a barstool by the breakfast bar; a pile of Trixie’s school papers on the kitchen table stacked messily and shoved to one side; a bag of trash in the front entryway that hadn’t made it to the dumpster; an open package of diapers waiting on the recliner in the living room near the recently-installed changing table. He made a mental note to take the bag of rubbish out with him when he left later and save his Detective the problem and shut the front door behind himself.

“Lucifer!” Trixie’s chirp of delight was as familiar as his own voice at this point, six weeks into the adventure of fatherhood. Daily visits to his Detective’s apartment had made him an expected part of their lives, and he found himself quite reveling in it. Trixie was no longer a small child, and had become a less alarming companion. He was more likely to be smeared in something objectionable by his own daughter than from the Detective’s urchin, and he had come to tolerate Dawn’s leavings. He could absolutely give a little more grace to Trixie.

“Ah.” Lucifer smiled at the young girl and quickly pulled a fresh five-dollar bill from a pocket, holding it towards Trixie as her smile turned into a knowing smirk. “There we are. And there will be another if you can find a way to keep yourself busy for the next two hours while your mother gets a nap.”

“No problem,” Trixie said, giving an extravagant wink to Lucifer before heading into her bedroom and pulling the door shut behind her. 

He could hear his Detective descending the stairs from her bedroom on the tiny second floor of the apartment, the soft gurgling of their daughter growing in volume as they approached him where he waited in the living room, tucking his hands into the pockets of his trousers. He enjoyed watching his Detective appear inch by inch, her bare feet and slim ankles his first glimpse of her. Her shapely calves, covered in fitted grey cotton pants, entered his vision next, followed by her thighs and belly and – distraction. Incredibly tiny feet kicked in delight against his Detective’s belly, each toe a perfection that surprised and delighted him each time he saw her.

“10am,” he said, stepping forward as his Detective and daughter made it to the ground floor. “I believe I promised you an uninterrupted shower and a nap.”

“I’m so glad you’re on time. Dawnie had me up half the night,” Chloe confessed as she transferred the baby into Lucifer’s arms. Dawn immediately took a double handful of suit jacket and tried to stuff it into her mouth. Quick maneuvering on Lucifer’s part saved the Hugo, and he resettled his daughter in his embrace with the practiced ease of six weeks of daily trial and error.

“Then make it a short shower,” he advised, freeing one arm from around his infant daughter to tickle one of her warm, round cheeks with a forefinger. She crowed in delight and immediately captured his finger in her own tiny digits, squeezing for all she was worth. “I can handle one infant and one small human for a few hours.”

“I know you can,” his Detective said, a soft smile lifting the corners of her mouth as she focused fully on him. “You’ve had a full night’s sleep. I _told_ you that you’d be better off sleeping in your penthouse when I saw how much Dawnie was chewing on the teething ring last night.”

“Yes, Detective, you’ve been proven right many times. Go shower.” Lucifer made shooing motions with the fingers Dawn did not have in a death grip. His Detective reached out, brushing a soft touch to his upper arm, her eyes warm and soft despite the obvious exhaustion in her gaze.

“Hey. I love you.”

“And you will have ample time to express those sentiments… _after_ you’ve rested. I insist, Detective; you cannot be an effective mother if you’re falling asleep beside your dinner plate.”

“That happened _once_ ,” Chloe muttered in an aggrieved tone, but her smile didn’t falter. She leaned out, deftly avoiding Dawn when the baby released Lucifer’s finger with a single hand to grab at her mother’s hair. His Detective dropped a soft kiss against one side of his jaw before she turned and made her way back up the stairs again.

“All right. Let’s get the worst out of the way first,” Lucifer said conversationally to his daughter, walking to the changing table in the living room and depositing the baby with some difficulty as she stubbornly refused to release his finger. “Right, yes, of course; the entertainment first.”

It took only a very little act of will for Lucifer to transform his usual seeming into his Devil face. He had discovered a week ago that diaper changes were immensely easier when the baby was sufficiently distracted, and after being forced several times to throw out diapers that Dawn had decorated with a well-tossed teething toy, he had hit upon the idea of entertaining her with something she could not throw into the horror of her diapers.

Dawn immediately crowed her delight at his Devil face, reaching her hands up in tiny demand. 

“A moment,” he advised. “I know patience is hardly a virtue we can claim, but try to emulate your mother in this.”

Lucifer made short work of her diaper, relieved that this one contained no surprises. He had gotten over his horror of diapers within the first few weeks. After all, it was no more onerous than the clean-up after a particularly enthusiastic and fluid-filled orgy. He had been managing _that_ for years. Humans had invented sanitizing wipes for a reason, after all.

Baby changed and safely placed belly-down on a blanket on the living room rug, Lucifer thoroughly sanitized the diaper changing area before giving his hands a scrubbing at the kitchen sink. He tipped his head slightly as he heard the sound of the shower upstairs shutting off. A moment later, he heard the soft sound of the Detective’s bedroom door shutting and he smiled in satisfaction, retreating back to the living room.

“Well, Dawn, what shall we do next?” Lucifer asked, settling himself comfortably on the edge of a couch cushion to gaze down at the minuscule person below him who was currently struggling in small, bobbing increments to hold her head up.

“Eehh!” Dawn said, a note of distress in her voice. Lucifer had her in his arms in a second, one hand supporting her bobbly head as she adjusted to the sudden change of position. Finding herself face-to-Devil-face, Dawn let out a much happier squeak and immediately placed both sweet-smelling hands against his mouth, tiny fingers flexing and grabbing at the red, leathery skin that covered his face.

She amused herself in exploration for several minutes, making thoughtful grunts every so often, and Lucifer let himself sink into cataloging her features for the umpteenth time.

He had admitted long since that his Detective had been right when she proclaimed Dawn’s hair to be a duplicate of his own. Dark, luxurious, with a tendency to curl, the hair crowning his daughter was indeed an exact replica of his. Her eyes were a mystery, a blue much deeper than his Detective’s own eyes. He had been assured by multiple people that baby’s eyes changed over the first year, and she would undoubtedly lose the mysterious depth of blue eventually, but he secretly hoped all the humans would be wrong. After all, no one had any experience with a half-human/half-Devil baby, did they?

Dawn’s chin was so thoroughly his Detective’s done in miniature that he often found himself rubbing the tip of his nose against it in unthinking worship. Her lips, also, were his Detective’s, her mouth wide and generous.

That same mouth was now opening in a long coo as she finally dropped her hands to her mouth to gum happily on her own fingers, her exploration of his face complete. With a small effort of will, he reverted to his angelic guise. Dawn gurgled around her fingers, and Lucifer felt a thrill as her mouth turned up into an unmistakable smile.

“You’ve never done that before!” he said, charmed beyond measure. Dawn blinked at him, the smile slowly fading as exhaustion filled her face. “Well, I can see how the effort of a first smile might make a nap a necessity. If the Detective is to be believed – and I have found her to be so except under very rare circumstances – you had very little sleep last night. Perhaps we can pass our morning with less bouncing and pacing and more silent contemplation?”

He carefully raised Dawn to his chest, securing her head against his shoulder as the gumming of her fingers turned to contented, soft suckling sounds. Lacking a piano or a free hand to play, Lucifer contented himself with humming, the vibration of his song a panacea of peace for his infant daughter curled against his chest in a tiny, sweet-smelling bundle of trust.

Once he was sure Dawn was truly asleep, he carefully scooted back into the embrace of the couch, relaxing as he segued from the first song into another slow and somnolent melody to encourage the baby to stay asleep.

It wasn’t until he felt the dip of the couch beside him that he realized he had been lulled into a half-stupor by the warm baby sleeping on his chest. He blinked his eyes open, turning to meet the inquisitive dark eyes of Trixie staring up at him hopefully.

“She’s sleeping?” Trixie whispered.

“Well spotted,” Lucifer murmured, and Trixie grinned widely.

“I used to nap on Daddy’s chest,” Trixie confessed. “When I was littler. It’s a really good place to sleep. I bet Dawnie thinks so, too.”

“Mmm,” Lucifer murmured, still feeling the torpid effects of the peacefully sleeping baby.

“Want to watch Super Hero Girls with me?” Trixie asked hopefully.

“As I’m currently trapped under a sleeping infant, it seems I hardly have a choice.”

Trixie bounced from the couch on silent feet, grabbing the remote and lowering the volume before queuing up her show. She settled next to Lucifer, one small shoulder pressing against his upper arm as bright colors and high-pitched voices filled with entirely-too-much enthusiasm began pouring from the TV across the room.

Lucifer allowed his eyelids to drop to half-mast, relaxing as Dawn made a soft gurgling sound on his chest, resuming sucking her fingers for a few moments before settling back into deeper sleep again. Trixie’s head leaned cautiously against his shoulder, and he did not comment, relaxing utterly into the quietude of the moment.

When Chloe came downstairs an hour later, refreshed after her uninterrupted nap, she found both her daughters fast asleep on the couch, accompanied by the soft snores of one Devil.


End file.
